SURPLUS LABOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22391, 12 October 1934, Page 8

SURPLUS LABOUR

NEED FOR READJUSTMENT THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, October 11. Some of the problems of the present and the future were dealt with by Archbishop Averill, Primate and Archbishop of New Zealand, in his charge to the Anglican Diocesan Synod to-day. His Grace said that instead of looking back with regret-to the standards oj the” good old days” before the war ,£he people must reconcile themselves to the fact that they were not likely to see in their day a return to the prosperity of prewar days. “ While we are anxious that the standard of wages and the spending capacity of the community should not be seriously reduced,” the Primate said, “ yet it is useless to live in a ‘ fool’s paradise ’ and imagine that the available labour in the world can be absorbed in useful industry in view of the everincreasing tendency of scientific invention to supplant man-power.. Until the world can adjust itself to the new conditions and realise that there must always be a considerable surplus of available labour under our present industrial system, we must be prepared for the unemployment problem to be more or less always with us. “ Shorter hours of labour and fewer working days in the week may afford, some relief,” proceeded his Grace. “ But what about the standard of wages? Cau the world adjust itself to a profitable and beneficial use of greater leisure and will the extra leisure contribute to the development of personality or the opposite? This is a problem for the Church as well as civic authorities. We realise that a man has a right to live and. a right to work for a living wage and that his working conditions should not militate against the true and full development of his personality. The time has passed for temporary expedients; The unemployment question calls for the reconstruction and readjustment of the whole question by the best brains available in the community.”