The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, APRIL 15, 1929 IDLENESS AND WEALTH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 638, 15 April 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, APRIL 15, 1929 IDLENESS AND WEALTH

UNEMPLOYMENT in Auckland is again over the thousand a week mark. The increase in the almost hopeless registrations of idle men last week exceeded a hundred and, m the ironic processes of ineffective administration, the placmgs of applicants for work in any sort of employment decreased seventy. As a pathetic example of departmental futility, the Government Labour Bureau was able to place only twenty-three men in employment—a feeble effort in comparison with Jhe preceding week’s record of ninety-four placements. The contrast is all the sharper because of the fact that, a year ago, administrators demanded full registrations of the unemployed as the first practical step toward a quick remedy. How could any Government, however willing and powerful, know exactly what to do if it lacked accurate knowledge of the extent of unemployment throughout the country ? Moreover, there was always the possibility that such unemployment as was then experienced was merely a seasonal embarrassment- a disagreeable condition which would pass away with the passing of autumn and winter. It need not be pretended that the registrations ever since the Ministerial cry for exact information about unemployment have been anything like a complete tally of the Dominion’s unemployed, but they certainly have been high enough all the time to demand better remedial attention than the Government, so far, has been able to provide. In Auckland alone, because it is the largest centre of population, the registrations every week for a year have revealed the seriousness of local unemployment. Other centres also have suffered. Apparently it is still necessary to attempt to convince the new Government, which was carried into power on a tidal wave of promise and the prospect of its possessing’ a remedial magic of its own, that the most vital political necessity at the moment is for it to realise that it is better for the country to provide work than to keep men constantly in idleness. The reply of the Government, of course, will be an assertion, no doubt perfectly true, that already it has done more than any previous administration ever did before for the practical relief of unemployment. Quite so, but no other Government promised to do as much in the same direction as the United Government guaranteed to do before it secured control of the Treasury. Not only did the present Government promise to relieve unemployment, but it promised in the plainest terms imaginable to provide a permanent cure. First, there was to be a vigorous national policy of public works so as to sweep away the existing blight of Unemployment,, and then there was to follow a steady development of the Dominion’s economic manufacturing industries together with a system of apprenticeship and an agricultural and a vocational training for youths in order to keep them out of a drift into idleness or unsuitable employment. course, in the Government’s attractive programme, no measured time for the accomplishment of promised wonders was specified, and it may be the intention of administrators to fulfill all their promises in the seventh year of their political reign. In the meantime, unemployment still is rife and marked with much acute distress and demoralising tendencies. Those whose national duty it is to dispense charitable aid for the relief of social misery now admit frankly that many of the recipients have become so used to charity that they are rapidly losing desire for hard work. Though the politicians in power are receiving the hardest kicks for failure to dispel the evil of unemployment throughout the Dominion, the Government alone really should not suffer all the chastisement. Others must share the responsibility for a chronic lack of employment. The Associated Banks whose ways always run in smooth and generous prosperity, cannot fairly be dissociated from the national failure to provide ample work and opportunity for everybody with enough self-reliance to avoid begging. The banks’ coffers are overflowing with hoarded money, earning a great deal less than it could earn quite safely in general enterprise. There is no valid reason for the excessive caution in investment that has been demonstrated by the grotesque pile of fixed deposits in the banks. Unless the economists have been raving, the country is sound and solidly prosperous. But money for enterprise is still too dear. Perhaps the Government, whose material interest in banking is substantial, may be able to persuade bankers that the time has come for easier rates. Unemployment, while the banks’ vaults are bursting with wealth, is a mockery of finance and polities.