The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1921. UNEMPLOYMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10881, 22 April 1921, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1921. UNEMPLOYMENT

Sir Francis Bell gave the political deputation, which demanded work for the unemployed, an admirable presentment of the financial situation, and the financial situation brought out the wonderful conception of finance which is cultivated by the Conservative Party. Let us first consider the financial situation. A glance is sufficient to take it all in frpm A tq Z. There is no money anywhere, not even enough to float Treasury bills in aid of revenue, that easiest and most conveniently cheap financial operation of normal times. Sometimes, let us say by the way, Colonial Treasurers in moments of daring folly took undue advantage of the pleasant process, bringing the country unpleasantly near to disaster, and quite into the region of soup-kitchens, starvation wages for useless works, a roaring tide of emigration, and choking atmosphere of blackest pessimism. But the Liberals coming into power on that inauspicious occasion, took enlightened hold of the country’s finance, made it sound, and established a series of surpluses which lasted, without galling taxpaying shoulders, for twenty years. At the end of .that period the Conservatives took the financial helm. The times were, they found, out of joint, it is true. True also is it that they found the financial position prudently buttressed and strongly underpinned. They demolished the buttresses and sawed asunder the pins. Then they proceeded to levy all the available money in the country, much of it by forced loans. Their next proceeding was to tie up most of the maturing deposits. The result is as described by Sir Francis Bell with such admirable, lucid, uncompromising terseness. To this Government in its bewilderment and perplexity there came the deputation to which this admirable exposition of the financial situation was made. It was a deputation mostly of Government supporters, Reformers all. we may say. of the party of highest understanding of high finance, as the Dominion has been over and over again assured? Was the deputation helpful? It would have been had it discovered the Purse of Fartunatus, or Aladdin’s wonderful lamp, or something akin. Even something of +he strain of Ali Baba’s great enterprise might have been, in some sense, helpful. Unfortunately the deputation only imagined it had discovered a wonderful source of endless revenue. But though the discovery only can scarcely he dignified with the title of mere speculation, tor speculation even of the wildest requires some sort of basis, however filmy, the deputation, with the whole weight behind it of the Reform claim to perfect familiarity wit!* high finance, proceeded to mate demands on! the bewildered and perplexed Government, declaring that the country had got back, or was about to fall rapidly back, into the dreadful condition into which the party of skilfully high finance had plunged it a generation ago. They laid it down with infallible authority that it is the imperative duty of the Government to rescue the unhappy people by “creating jobs.” Shades of the pioneers of New Zealand 1 They lived laborious days; they faced hardships and hardest labour; they mode this country what it is by grit, self-reliance, grim sticking it through bad times. If they could hear that gospel of creating jobs for a people demanding spoonfeeding, they would turn in their graves. It was with some trace of such a feeling that Sir Francis Bell showed the deputation, by his clear financial exposition, what sort of ground they •had taken up to support their extreme demand. They had swept the returned soldiers into the foundation far their attack. But the Acting-Prime Minister quietly told them that the special funds set aside for the returned soldiers were yet unexhausted. It was the finishing touch of deserved discomfiture But this does not round off the story of the deputation. The Minister' fox Labour did that in the name, we presume, of the high finance in which has party el'qjpns such pre-eminence. The Minister claimed the help for the Government of all who have anything put by. Whether or - not, he hod paid any attention to the explanation of his colleague that nobody’s saved money was available, he persisted' in hie claim. Every one, he dedarqjl, who has £2OO lying aside must accept the 1 duty of handing it over for, the unemployed. Thp consequences of this doctrine hear close examination. The first consequence is the plight of the men who are protesting that the future of thrift and -self-denial is to te thrown into the melting pot, and that the claims : of their wive® and children are worth no more consideration than- a scrap of paper. Them consider the unemployed. Some of these are unemployed through their own fault, and their number is threatened with largo reinforcement by certain aggressive people who declare they mußt “fight”

because tlieir extortionate demands have been turned down, and who, if they make good that declaration, will have to send round the hat among the victims of the “fight.” But, according to the Minister for Labour, every man who has anything in his pocket must draw it out for the unemployed, including these people. We are quite sure that he never contemplated anything like this. But it is the logical consequence of his claim on the thrifty, and he belongs to the party of deep acquaintance with finance, and even to its chosen Government. It comes to this really : that the Government which has broken down the buttresses of finance, sawn asunder the props, toothcombed out of the country all the available particles of cask and tied up the balance, is now demanding help from the thrifty, if anything of theirs is lying handy, to the detriment of their future and the interests of their families. And this is the expedient of high and skilful finance, which turns the blind eye helplessly, if not os-' tentatiausly, towards retrenchment in the Public Services.