UNEMPLOYMENT

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 78, 15 June 1928, Page 5

UNEMPLOYMENT

SOME USEFUL SUGGESTIONS. PRIMARY PRODUCTION. ' '•"' (Special to Post.') ■<''■; WELLINGTON, This Day. ',l have no remedial scheme to offer in regard to this great industrial problem of unemployment common to all parts of the world," said the Chairman! of Directors in his address at *the Annual Meeting of the Bank to-day. "I would, however, draw attention to one phase of New Zealand conditions bearing on the subject which does not, I think, receive the consideration it deserves."

According to the 1921 census the Speaker went on, out of the 533,000 breadwinners in the Dominion, 152,000. were engaged in primary production. According to the last available figures, 1025-26, the total production for the year amounted to £116,000,000, to which the primary producers contributed £82,000,000. Thus it appeared that primary producers being les s than one-third of the breadwinners contributed more than twothirds of the national wealth. The figureg made one wonder why primary production did not, land could not, absorb a greater proportion of the population and so decrease in some degree the ranks of the unemployed.

SECONDARY OCCUPATIONS

Protection, by Customs Tariff, Conciliation' and Arbitration Courts, all tended to smooth out the difficulties of breadwinners engaged in secondary occupations, while our education system also fostered the idea of secondary occupations or professional careers. A MISTAKE MADE. "The trouble at the moment," ho went on "is that tho majority of boys leave school with their inclinations tending away from a farming occupation and towards the seemingly easier and apparency better-paidi work "of the city. Furthermore, I think that in the praiseworthy endeavour to bring secondary education within tho reach of every boy and girl a mistake is made in not demanding a much higher state of efficiency before they are passed on to the higher! grade school. In discussing this subject, a great New Zealand headmaster/a ml in respected and loved by the thousands of boys who passed through his hands, said "It is my confirmed belief that 50 per cent of the boys sent on from the primary to the secondary schools should not have been sent on." In his opinion, there was 'here a waste of public money, for an intended advantage frequently proved a disavantage ■ As I stated, I have no remedy foi the unemployment *Mcfy,^ 1 d 0 suggest, that the trend of teaching houult have a decided bias towar primary production and all t jeans to the nation and tho individual. -