THE DOLE IN ENGLAND

Southland Times, Issue 20641, 13 November 1928, Page 7

THE DOLE IN ENGLAND

NEW ZEALANDER’S VIEWS. “A REMEDY MUST BE FOUND.” London, September 7. Mr. E. Earle Vaile, of Auckland, is apprehensive for the state of Great Britain, and he voices those apprehensions in a letter to the Morning Post. He maintains that a remedy must be found for unemployment. “England appears no longer the mistress of her destinies,” Mr. Vaile says. “The ship drifts. Nobody cares. Everybody waits, Micawber-like, for something to turn up—for some god to hop out of some machine. The dreadful shadow of unemployment darkens the land. Pauperism is accepted as inevitable. The people deceive themselves. They call charitable aid ‘unemployment insurance,’ and are satisfied. “Everone recognizes the evil; no one has the courage to grapple with it. The universal answer is, The “dole” cannot be done without. There would be a revolution.’

How pitiful! Not only is the vital independent spirit of the recipients of the ‘dole’ thereby corrupted, but an equally evil effect is produced on those who pay it from fear. “A remedy must be found. England simply cannot continue to foot a budget of £800,000,000 per annum and keep millions of countries down. Disease will kill as surely as blows. This England, with her wonderful record, unique in the world’s history, that no foreign foe has been able to set foot on her soil for more than eight and a-half centuries, may be brought low by the enemy within. I say a remedy can and must be found. Several letters have followed Mr. Vaile’s original one. One writer says:—“Prior to 1914 we had a normal unemployed population of about 600,000; at present we have an abnormal one of about 1,250,000. Only about 700,000 out of Great Britain’s 44,000,000 are engaged in actual cultivation of the soil; this is the crux of the problem of unemployment. In France cultivators of the soil exceed those of Great Britain by 6,000,000, while unemployment is non-ex-istent. Until we can reduce the existing disparity between our urban and rural popu-

lation the spectre of unemployment, with its corollary of the dole, will continue to darken our horizon.” Another correspondent states that “since the war women have tended to under sell and displace men in many occupations, abandoning what was formerly one of their chief occupations, domestic service. They prefer employment at less than a living wage, with unlimited freedom at night, to good pay, comfortable homes, and good food, but some restrictions on their freedom. “While there are thousands of ex-service men unemployed, the public services—e.g., the Ministry of Pensions and the Poet Office —recruit annually large numbers of untrained young girls for work which men could do better. The increased employment of girls has enabled large numbers of them to qualify for the ‘dole/ which they prefer to honest work as domestic servants. There are probably more vacancies for domestic servants than there are women for the ‘dole.’ ”