THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1929. UNEMPLOYMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20963, 28 February 1930, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1929. UNEMPLOYMENT.

The second report of the Special Committee which was set up by the Government to investigate the problem of unemployment has not been received with the chorus of satisfaction that might have been expected if the community had formed of it the same highly favourable opinion as was expressed by the Minister of Labour when it was handed to him. Dealing as it does with a large and, for the time being, perplexing subject the report would have been a document of exceptional merit if it was not to meet with a good deal of criticism. But the criticism that has been levelled against it in the public references which have been made to it has been of such a character and has been directed from so many points that it may already be regarded as extremelv doubtful whether the Ministers as a body will be courageous enough to take upon themselves the responsibility of inviting parliamentary sanction of the scheme. The Government may indeed quite reasonably hold that the scheme, about which the Minister of Labour is so enthusiastic, is based upon an assumption that is more or less groundless, that assumption being, that unemployment on a large scale is an ineradicable disease necessitating the institution for its treatment of an elaborate State department. There is no sufficient "warrant for holding that unemployment <in the form in which! it exists at the present time in New Zealand and in most of the countries of the world is a permanent malady. Everyone in the Dominion knows that unemployment on a large scale is not chronic in this country. The world.is out of joint as a result of the stupendous destruction of capital during the Great \Var, and to this fact may primarily be attributed the almost universal prevalence of unemployment to an intensely regrettable degree. , It would be foolish, how- [ ever, and mischievous to suppose that the dislocation of industry that is due to the loss of capital will be of permanent duration. Yet it must be on ithe supposition that the unemployed we shall have always with us, in large numbers, that the Special Committee has based its recommendations for the establishment of an Employment Board | and for the imposition of fresh taxation to the extent' of nearly threequarters of a million a year. This is surely a policy of despair. It involves a denial of the capacity of the world to recover from even the heavy blow to its economic and financial stability that it suffered between 1914, and 1918. The world staggered under the blow but was not prostrated by it, and the recuperative powers which it has exhibited under the stress of less calamitous circumstances encourage the hope that, jhough the process of restoration has already been long,and painful, it may yet achieve a complete recovery. At all events, there seems no reason to suppose that unemployment is going to continue with us in dimensions serums enough to justify the installation of all the ponderous machinery that is proposed by the Special Committee. A great deal might be done to reduce i materially the volume of unemployment in New Zealand if greater encouragement were offered than is now the case to the companies and firms that are engaged in industrial enterprise. They are harassed and hampered in many ways. Legislative restrictions and awards of the Arbitration Court operate against the employment of additional hands. The development of industry is checked j where it should be encouraged. It is i desirable and necessary that the | country should consider how it may assist in the, expansion of existing industries and in the creation of new industries in which work will be provided for skilled artisans and in Avhich youths may be trained to become skilled workmen. Any suggestion that, instead of this, a State department should be established that will be concerned with the provision of unskilled work for individuals who, in this event, will never be anything but unskilled workers and will be reduced to a condition of dependence on the State for a living, whether it be in the form of a wage or of a sustenance ; allowance, should not commend itself to the judgment of the public. We should have greater confidence in the future of the Dominion than to suppose that the adoption of a course of this nature is inevitable.-