TRUTH ABOUT THE DOLE

Otago Witness, Issue 4042, 1 September 1931, Page 30

TRUTH ABOUT THE DOLE

TRADE UNIONS’ CONFERENCE “DRIFTING TO RUIN.” (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 10. At the annual conference of th& General Federation of Trade Unions in Blackpool last week, Mr W. A. Appleton, the secretary, was attacked for supporting the recommendations of the Royal Commission which recently pointed out remedies for the more glaring abuses, and retorted: “ Many people too airily assume that the State are a few people at the top who do very little but talk. You are in the habit, many of you, of thinking that the rich find the money for mail” tenance of the unemployed. They don’t. It is the people who produce who have to find it. “Mr Blackwell’s (a London delegate) theory (that taxation will solve the dole problem) would condemn every' productive worker to about 16 hours a day and 14s a week.” There were cries of “No! No!” but Mr Appleton ignored the interruption, and told the delegates they had got to face fasts. “Go about among the men who are working,” he advised the delegates, “ and you will find they are just as sick of robbery and subterfuge as I am. “ You are drifting to commercial and industrial bankruptcy, and it will be God help an industrial country like ours if that comes about.” The chairman (Mr C. Kean) said the views of Mr Appleton’s critics would be right in the world they desired, but Mr Appleton was right in the present economic state of the world.