FIRST UNEMPLOYED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 693, 19 June 1929, Page 7

FIRST UNEMPLOYED

PROBLEM OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND DRAFTING OF POOR LAWS Politicians who wrestle with unemployment these days may find some I solace in the fact that their predeees- i sors for 300 years have been unable to i solve the problem. In the Elizabethan era in England the first relief measures were enacted. This, according to Mr. lit R. Rod- | well. M.A., lecturer in economics, in aj public address on “Life and Labour in Elizabethan Times” in the University College Hall last evening. No epoch in history rivalled the Elizabethan in glamour and appeal to the imagination, the lecturer asserted. It was an era of the development of literature, a quickening interest in the Renaissance and the evolution and development of a national conscience which found expression in social organisations. The merry England that appealed to the imagination was not as people pictured it; there was too much tendency to idealise this period The court was corrupt and filled with avaricious place-seekers; outside London there was terrible hardship because of the eviction of the peasants from their holdings for the enclosure of common lands. The monasteries and leligious guilds were suppressed and therefore, the dispossessed farmers had no one to whom to turn for assistance The towns, jealously guarding their privileged position, did not want these people, and the country became full of bands of sturdy vagabonds who made life and property insecure. Development of overseas trade and other economic forces, which produced a class of industrial capitalist about this time brought in its wake England’s first unemployment problem. The workless comprised principally the dispossessed farmers. The great Elizabethan Poor Law code—of 1601 —designed to meet the problem, provided work for those who required it and assistance for those unable to labour. The measure was extremely effective and constructive, which was unusual in view of the fact that all previous legislation was repressive. Indeed, so carefully worked out was this policy that it remained operative with modifications until the Poor Laws were redrafted in 1534.

The reorganisation of England economically was one of the features of the age. The various trades and crafts which were previously controlled by guilds, who undertook the training of apprentices, were superseded by merchants and powerful capitalists. The employer and worker as understood in the modern sense then developed. The Elizabethan Court was the focal point of national life. It was corrupt; it attracted the clever mountebank besides men of real talent and vigour. And because the Queen had encouraged talented personalities the court was so valuable to England. The lecturer interestingly pictured the evolution of Elizabethan architecture and furnishings, the extravagances and absurdities of Elizabethan dress and passionate love of music and dancing.