THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, MAY 8, 1934 FACTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21794, 8 May 1934, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, MAY 8, 1934 FACTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

In his address to the Rotary Club on "Youth and the Future of New Zealand," Sir Joseph Smith discussed several phases of the unemployment problem. Not all, of course, for to do that would lay too heavy a toll on the ability, energy and time of anybody, no matter how expert. He must be well aware that unemployment has neither a unique cause nor a unique remedy, and that the real difficulty of the problem is created by the complexity of both cause and remedy. Nevertheless, while wisely refraining from a claim to expound the whole cause and remedy, Sir Joseph advanced some points of use in any fruitful inquiry. In the course of his survey he indicated the need to undertake a close investigation of facts. He had mainly in mind the investigation required as a basis for handling the practical aspect of the problem as it relates to the youth of this country, but noted also the need for precise information on unemployment generally in the Dominion as a pre-requi-site of any effectual endeavour to deal with it. Such information, to be of any real value, must be more than a mere skeleton of statistics. This has been recognised in all countries, more or less, in initiating schemes of any worth. There are various types of unemployment: normal periodical unemployment due to cyclical fluctuations of trade, seasonal unemployment such as is common in many industries, unemployment due to changes in industrial method, incapacity for employment, and abnormal unemployment resulting from war and postwar conditions and centred primarily in export industries. Early in all serious approaches to the problem efforts were made to tabulate the various included facts, with a view to guiding remedial measures. But the problem has changed with the passing of time, and an analysis made, say, three years ago is unserviceable now. For instance, some schemes of relief have reduced, others have increased, incapacity for employment, and thus altered the problem. To keep abreast of the need means, then, keeping abreast of the facts; and this, as Sir Joseph Smith has pointed out in relation to work for youth, means even anticipating the state of demand and supply some years ahead, especially in coping with the requirement of the growing generation. Planning of this sort can, no doubt, overshoot its good intention: it may treat as static a condition of things undergoing alteration more or less rapid and thus vitiating the methods adopted in advance. However, in discussing work for youth some things may be taken as assured, having regard to the prevailing industrial outlook in this country for a considerable time to come. One is the virtual certainty that rural pursuits will remain preeminently important. Every day, Sir Joseph Smith ventured to say, there was increased evidence in support of the value such employment was to the community. Is this realised as it should be? A short cut to a disquieting answer is found in the prevalent reluctance of youth to take tip farming work. There has been much talk about imparting an agri- j cultural bias to education, and a cer-1 tain amount of effort has been put j into the task of bringing this about— j with a result that is meagre and disappointing. For a country con-j ditioned as is New Zealand there is j a top-heavy preponderance of popu- j lation in towns, and the job crying ; to be done is to turn back to rural; areas the tide that has been flowing i into these towns. This will not be accomplished by merely including lessons on agriculture in a syllabus or by providing farm - centres for training. Other factors, economic facts among them, enter the problem, and to expect to solve it by attention to only sortie of them is a fatal error.

It may be that in New Zealand an increase in juvenile unemployment will have to be faced, as is expected in England, because of an increase in the birth-rate in the years immediately following the war. To settle this point is a task for statistical inquiry, which must consider much more than the figures of vital statistics. What if an achieved decrease in adult unemployment bring about an increase in juvenile unemployment'? That may happen; nothing seems more likely. Unless a speedy development of productive work take place, to absorb permanently a very large number of adults now out of work, the probability of merely displacing junior with senior workers is imminent. It will not do merely to find work for some by denying work to others; that is not a solution but only a shifting of the incidence of hardship, perhaps an aggravation of it. What advantage will it be to find employment for all the present adult generation, if the succeeding generation grows up disinclined and unready to carry on that work t Again,

of course, is met the possibility that the situation will have changed by the time the youthful generation of to-day has grown up, and the folly of hard-and-fast planning must be remembered. But with the virtual certainty of a preponderating necessity for developing primary industries it is wise to prepare the rising generation for these industries. The main thing, it seems, is to get down to facts—with due regard to their fluid quality—and to make them impressively known. Agricultural bias in education is all very well, but as a lure to farm-work it is proved to have severe limits, whereas the plain and forceful telling of youth that unless it takes to farming it has a poor prospect of successful living would have far greater results. It will be a good thing if the impact of unemployment, its hardships included, should produce a zest all round for economic facts, without accurate knowledge of which the plausibilities of economic theorising are only vacant whisperings in the wind.