THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 1928. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20448, 30 June 1928, Page 12

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 1928. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

There is every reason to suppose that tho Opposition will endeavour to make all the political capital that is possible out of the existence of unemployment iu the Dominion at the present time. Of this an evidence was provided yesterday when an Impi'est Supply Bill offered the opportunity to the Labour Party to submit a rather extravagantly phrased amendment relating to the subject. Unemployment is an economic evil which, however it may be caused, inflicts injury upon the whole community while it lasts, and undoubtedly it behoves tho community, in its own interest, to do what it can to combat it. To declare, as members of the Opposition declare, that the Government is responsible for it is to shut one’s eyes to tho fairly obvious. The prevalence of unemployment in New Zealand may very confidently be attributed in the first place and in the largest degree to the difficulties that were temporarily created by the fall in the values of the exportable produce of tho country, and in the second place to the fact that a number of arbitration awards fix the scales of wages upon a level that discourages the employment of inexperienced workers. There are other contributing factors among which it is impossible to disregard the extent ol the displacement of male by female labour. The chief cause of unemployment iu the country is, however, it is held upon competent economic authority, not likely to operate much longer. Professor Tocker, of Canterbury College, had no hesitation iu expressing the belief, at a conference in Christchurch this week, that, consequent on the improvement in the trade position, the problem of unemployment iu its present form is not likely to last long over the winter months. In the meantime the Government, depicted by the Opposition as heartlessly indifferent to the cases ot individual distress that are due to tho inability of men to obtain employment in the callings in which they have been trained, has been providing, and is continuing to provide, relief works that have absorbed, and will still absorb, a considerable amount ri labour. But, the Opposition complains, the men who go to the relief works are not paid the standard wage. This complaint disregards various considerations that are not immaterial. In effect, however, the men who arc employed on some of these relief works determine, by the measure ol the service they render, the amount of the pay they receive. Unfortunately this amount has in some instances, partly, it may be surmised, on account of broken weather, fallen below the rate specified by tho Government. It is to be feared that all the relief works yield uneconomic results simply because so many of tho men who are engaged on them are hopelessly inefficient. Only humanitarian sentiment—to use Mr Philip Snowdon’s expression—would justify tho payment of standard wages at relief works to men who are incapable of performing efficient servic. It they were paid standard wages, tbo incentive to them to seek work in other directions would be certainly weakened. What tho Government aims at doing is the provision of work which will enable men* many

of them wholly unsuited to that work, to tide over a period of embarrassment pending the time when improved economic conditions will admit of their employment in industrial occupations. Mr H. T. Armstrong, one of the Labour members of Parliament, has put forward the interesting suggestion that if a little more attention were given to the idle rich more would be done towards the solution of the problem of the idle poor. It seems rather a pity that he did not elaborate this suggestion, the precise significance of which wo are, as it is, left to discover for ourselves. The number of residents of New Zealand who can be classed as <! idle rich ” must be small. The majority of the well-to-do in our midst are the reverse of idle. But if there be 1 idle rich ” people in tho community, and apparently Mr Armstrong envisages an army of them, it would be instructive if he were to let us know in what way they create unemployment in the general sense of tho term. It might be supposed that, doing no work themselves, they provide at least a certain amount of work for others through tho means at their disposal. Moreover, where the rich person is idle he obviously does not enter into competition with others in the industrial market. Rather, by his own abstention from work, he makes room for somebody else who needs it and is desirous of doing it. Mr Armstrong’s point of view is, however, somewhat mystifying. If the “ idle rich ” of whom ho speaks were suddenly to take off their coats and show a taste for manual labour he would probably still be dissatisfied with them.