BRITAIN MAKES A BEGINNING

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12252, 25 September 1925, Page 7

BRITAIN MAKES A BEGINNING

PLAN CAPABLE OF EXPANSION NO DOLE, BUT FREE BOARD By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. LONDON, September 23. The Ministry of Labour’s experimental training scheme is attracting widespread comment. The scheme is at present limited to 2400 men annually.. Residential centres accommodating 400 men will be located in East Anglia. Trainees for overseas must be provisionally approved by some Dominion migration authority. They will lose unemployment benefits, and

instead will be given free board and lodging and an allowance of 5s a week and a free passage when finally accepted for migration. The “Daily Chronicle” points out that the present limited scheme, both for Home and overseas life, is oapahle of the widest expansion. There are now 225,000 unemployed' men under -30 years. It would cost £12,500,000 a year to give them the proposed elementary training, but unemployed payments would he correspondingly reduced. “OUR NEED IS IMMENSE” The “Morning Post,” in a leader, says: “It is little use training men for land if there is none to offer them. Successive Imperial and Dominion' Governments have approved of the enterprise. Re-distribution of population, means inter-imperial migration, but little is being done to carry it out. There . are Australian settlement schemes in which the Imperial Common wealth and State Governments an, partners. When will they be set in motion P” “Our need is so immense; it Is instant. No schemes so far proposed effect more than a negligible relief. What is required is an effort comparable with war times, when millions of men were carried overseas. That was for destruction. To-day’s purpose ib wholly con struetive, yet so little is being done PAYMENT FOR IDLENESS “Fewer migrants are now going to Australia than before the war. We do not desire to apportion the blame, but a great Imperial emergency is not being met. Hundreds of millions are being spent to keep men and women in idleness, when they might be spent in providing them with a settled livelihood overseas. We suggest that the Government should appoint a committee, including representatives of the Dominions, the Colonial Office, a financier, and a practical agriculturist, to investigate the whole matter.”