THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1935. THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22628, 20 July 1935, Page 12

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1935. THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

In his public utterances respectthe unemployment problem Mr W. Bromley, deputy chairman of the Unemployment Board, generally speaks with a great deal of force, especially in reply to the kind of criticism for which the Board is so commonly made a target. In an address which he delivered at Dannevirke yesterday he sfcbmitted the problem to an examination from a highly important viewpoint, albeit one which critics of the Board may be inclined to evade. In large measure Mr Bromley’s concern was to place before business men certain pertinent considerations and ask point-blank how they proposed that the questions thus raised should be answered. ■» The existing problem he described as one of chronic large-scale unemployment. It may be disturbing to a great many people to hear it so described, for the acceptance of the description carries with it the destruction of any comfortable notion that extensive unemployment is only a passing phase. But if large-scale unemployment is to be chronic, it is better that the community should realise this than that it should flatter itself with the expectation that the evil will right itself in time. Relief legislation has not been designed to meet such a development as that which Mr Bromley invites the public to contemplate, but it can at least be claimed that the measure of relief granted in this country is “on a higher basis than that of any other unemployment relief administration.”

At the end of last month the number of men wholly or partially dependent on the Unemployment Fund was 53,241. Of these 36,305 are without contract of employment, says Mr Bromley, because industry cannot employ them profitably. The Unemployment Board is criticised not infrequently for failings to provide full-time employment at standard rates for all the unemployed. The fallacy of such a conception of the Board’s duty Mr Bromley has easily exposed. The Government, which, like the Board, is assailed for what it has not done, is being called upon by resolutions adopted in different centres to institute major public works for the absorption of the unemployed. Mr Bromley inquires, as he may well do, what the public works are wjjieh are thus what the conditions of employment would be, and how they would bo financed. During all last summer, he recalls, there were a hundred and fifty jobs without workers in Central Otago. These jobs were reserved for unemployed city workers. But the city workers were indisposed to face the hardships of a rural existence, and in that attitude they were encouraged by a good many people. Country workers wanted the jobs, and when they > were made eligible the vacancies were speedily tilled. The requirements of'the Public Works Department were satisfied, but farmers complain that they cannot obtain labour. The adoption of a public works programme might, therefore, create a new unemployment problem in the country without solving the problem in the cities. Clearly, as j Mr Bromley suggests, in any thought in terms of public works —which must be in the country—in relation to our | city unemployed, the wider vision is , necessary.

Mr Bromley’s address will repay careful perusal throughout, and must prompt, as it is intended to do, some searching questioning. In a sense it is an appeal to the community to face hard facts. The time is opportune, it is suggested, for a new orientation of this problem of unemployment,

with legislation re-designed to place greater emphasis on employment and less on its relief side. That opens up a large subject. The Unemployment Board, as Mr Bromley points out, has no legislative authority to become an employer of labour. But if it be insisted that the State shall accept the full responsibility for finding standard employment for all those not required in the industries controlled by private enterprise, then what becomes of the objection to the State’s invasion of industry? As Mr Bromley sees it, the question has become one, not whether the State should enter into industry, but whether the country can afford the luxury of keeping the State out of industry and leaving the field to private enterprise. It costs the State in relief aid '£ 32,500 a year for every five hundred unemployed. Were it to employ these men in some industry at £4 a week and make an annual loss of £20,000 the State would, Mr Bromley points out, still be making a substantial saving in comparison with its present expenditure. The loss entailed in the cost of relief falls on the community and the onus is on the community, Mr Bromley would emphasise, to say what it is going to do about it. Without expansion of the country’s secondary industries he sees no prospect of the unemployment figures being reduced to below 30.000. The only alternative to sustaining these people by the redistribution of existing incomes—for that is what present relief amounts to—is some real planning for a better distribution of employment. To leaders of industry in the Dominion Mr Bromley particularly addi’esses himself in this connection. His line of argument may not be appreciated in all quarters, but the questions raised in his thoughtful analysis merit serious consideration.