UNEMPLOYMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21067, 29 December 1931, Page 10

UNEMPLOYMENT.

Sir, —Will you permit me as one who has had a considerable amount of experience in dealing with unemployment problems to voice my humble opinion on the present economic situation. To my mind the drift into depression which is paralysing the world to-day might be arrested by the introduction of a vigorous State policy of marshalling our resources, viz., unemployed men, idle land, and fostering those local industries which have more or less been crippled by the importation of foreign goods. The remedy is in tie hands of the Government and the time has arrived to co-ordinate and utilise tha willing workers and idle lands and to evolve a system of production and distribution to take the place of paying for non-productive work and providing food for necessitous cases which is sapping the country of its substance. Desperate diseases demand desperate remedies' and the sooner we realise that- the ills of (he present time cannot be cured by bleed--ing the patient, the sooner we will commence to make headway and incidentally find work for the boys now leaving school who will otherwise swell the ranks of the unemployed. The whole question is a national one and the State should grapple with it resolutely and boldly and substitute something tangible for the present, poiicy of drift. Alex. H. WilkA.