SOCIAL SERVICES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22326, 28 July 1934, Page 4

SOCIAL SERVICES

AN INTERNATIONAL SURVEY By Allan G. B. Fisixek, Ph.d. "An International Surrey of Social Services." Complied by the International Labour Office. London: P. S. King and Son. (£1 2s 6d net.) Not least among the services which are being rendered to the world by the League of Nations and the International Labour Office is the regular provision of information on economic and social questions covering practically every country. Newspaper readers to-day are perhaps inclined to take for granted the casual references to international statistics with which journalists and statesmen are now able to illustrate their reasoning, and they are likely to forget that only a few years separate us from the time when any such international comparisons would have been quite out of the question. The value ol these international records is obvious enough; with their help we can the more readily avoid other people mistakes, and our exploration of new fields of activity will be all the more successful if we can first ascertain how similar experiments have worked elsewhere. In every country to-day statesmen are faced with similar problems, and it is not surprising that they should find themselves feeling out tentatively towards similar solutions. Their search is likely to be much more fruitful if they have ready access to records of what has been attempted elsewhere, and in this connection the publications of the League of Nations and the 1.L.0. arc invaluable. _ . , The latest contribution of this kind offered by the International Labour Office is a weighty International Survey of Social Services. There have been many discussions in recent years of the alleged handicaps imposed upon industries by the costs of social services, health, and unemployment insurance and the like, and it hag been often claimed by critics of these activities that they made competition in foreign markets impossible, it therefore becomes a matter of some importance to attempt a comparative study of these social service “ burdens.” The Internationa! Labour Office has indeed found it impossible so far to construct any comparative international statement on the subject, partly on account of the incompleteness and heterogeneity of national statistics and partly for the excellent reason that social expenditure is not necessarily a net cost, but is in “ reality productive, because of the economic and.financial benefits it procures for the community as a whole.” These benefits are not easy to measure directly, but they arc much more important than critics of j social services realise. Instead, therefore, of publishing a ' volume which pretended to much greater accuracy in its details than is possible in existing circumstances, the International Labour Office has now- prepared a series of 24 descriptive and statistical monographs dealing with the social services of countries as diverse in their economic and social structure as Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Hungary, India, Japan, Bulgaria, ami Switzerland. The studies cover insurance of all kinds, sickness, workmen’s compensation, and unemployment, non-contributory pensions, unemployment relief, assistance for aged, blind and infirm persons, maternity allowances, family allowances, housing subsidies, holidays without pay and other miscellaneous forms of social relief, and the collection of information here brought together is invaluable both for specialists in these subjects, and for all who take a general interest in social policy. The volume as a whole is scarcely one which anyone will care to read straight through without a break, but nearly every section will repay the most careful study. The outstanding impression left in the mind of a New Zealand reader will probably be the surprising variety of social services which are already being rendered in nearly every part of the world. At j least partial schemes of family allowances ; are in operation in several European countries, and in other directions too the countries which have been accustomed to priding themselves upon being pioneers can seldom claim to-day to be far ahead of their imitators. _ Many people in New Zealand have been in the habit of speaking as if the social services of this country were a net burden, something peculiar to ourselves and not to be found on any considerable scale elsewhere. _ As has already been suggested, this view overlooks the valuable positive contributions which social services render to the organisation of production. But even if they were a burden, this volume makes it abundantly clear that they are a burden willingly borne by countries of every type and social outlook.