UNEMPLOYMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22390, 9 April 1936, Page 15

UNEMPLOYMENT

Sir, —I can sympathise with votir correspondent "Sufferer," but the expedient ho proposes would not reduce unemployment at all. He proposes that certain classes of people should be deprived of their jobs in order to provide employment for others, more deserving —a case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul." The secret of employment for all lies in the full and just utilisation of the land of the people, by the people and for the people as commanded in the scriptures. "Idle lands mean idle hands." Land is the source of all wealth, and the more the land is used the more is wealth produced, and the more is the work for all the people—not only on the land—but in the towns and elsewhere, and in all branches of human activity. More employment on the land means more employment in the towns in manufacturing, processing, packing, transporting, storing, distributing, shipping and selling the wealth created off the land. The densely populated Asiatic countries have no unemployment because their lands are most intensively cultivated by the people and for their own needs, and not to export for the benefit of others. They have not amongst them the credit monopoly and land monopoly prevalent in the European countries, to force people off the land, to make both idle, 'fhe difference between intensively cultivated land and idle pasture land is, that the same area of land will produce 50 to 100 times as much wealth in the former case, and if land is fed on its proper food and given a periodical rest as commanded in the scriptures, there is no fear of its exhaustion, however intensively worked. Thomas A. F. Stone.