THE DOLES SYSTEM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19374, 9 January 1925, Page 6

THE DOLES SYSTEM.

BFPKCT ON TEXT ILK SYSTEM. MILES WORKING SHORT TIME. (From Opr Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, January 0. Mr A. A. Corrigan, who has returned from a visit to the Motherland, says that as a New Zealander who from week to week and from month to month reads the unemployment statistics, he was confronted with a very puzzling state of affairs. This was particularly so when he came into close touch with the manufacturers of woollen and textile goods. Orders placed from four to six months previously remained unexecuted, and no promise in a number of cases could be exacted whether the goods would be delivered. Yet the mills would be working on half-time or threequarter time. When the question was put us to why they could not speed up by bringing the mills Into full time, the answer was never convincing. Some with much indoflniteness would make some refere.ncc to raw' materials. Sometimes it would be rates of pay, and again (be demands by labour as to hours and conditions. It would appear, however, staled Mr Corrigan, that at the root of the trouble was the existing dole to the unemployed workers. The dole appeared to influence the manufacturers to the view that the larger number who were employed and the larger number ineligible for the dole the better would be the position of a prospective? settlement and of national production. The return of what promised to be a stable Government bad occasioned great relief, and had resulted in the reopening of factories which had been closed down.