The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1929 DEMAND FOR A BETTER DOLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 811, 4 November 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1929 DEMAND FOR A BETTER DOLE

A E 1 Eli diplomatic conquests and commendable work abroad, the British Labour Party’s hardest battle is likely to be iouglit at home and in the house of its own friends and supporters.. Already the coalminers have taken the field with a view to winning a shorter working day, and now the extremists in the 1 arhamentary party are demanding a better “dole” for the insured unemployed. An. official report from London today predicts the possibility of a crisis in the ranks of the Labour Party in the Etouse of Commons over a demand for increased benefit rates from 17s, to a week for men, from 7s to 10s for their wives, and from 2s to 5s weekly for their dependent children. The Parliamentary lobbyist, who limns the shadows of coming events, notes that the Minister of Labour, Miss Margaret Bondfield, has been informed that unless the Bill to he introduced before Christmas augments the existing rates fifty Labour members will vote against the Government. It is also reported as something understood rather than as a fact disclosed that both Miss Bondfield and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Snowden, are opposed to the extremists’ demands, and that the latter will resign if the disloyalty of Labour members jeopardises the Cabinet. There may be nothing more than piquant political gossip in the report, hut there is certainly enough in it and behind it to bring into prominence the fact that unemployment insurance does not contribute anything toward the elimination or even the reduction of demoralising idleness. It has been claimed without challenge that Great Britain’s system of unemployment insurance is the best in the world, both as regards principle and actuarial soundness. And yet it has failed to alleviate the evil of unemployment. Only once since, the inception of the British scheme lias the registered number of unemployed dropped below a million, while today, according to the Rt. Hon. J. IT. Thomas, Minister of Unemployment, “the second and more dangerous half of the unemployment problem is that 400,000 or 500,000 of our fellow-citizens have been unemployed in some cases for three or four years, and even more.” So far, close on £600,000,000 has been spent in the distribution of insured unemployment benefit rates, and not a shilling of that vast sum has been expended on the provision of useful work for any one of the tens of thousands of recipients. Statesmen have admitted that, if the colossal outlay on unemployment insurance doles had been spent on the establishment and development of reproductive works, unemployment, at the worst, would have been reduced to the normal level which, in Great Britain, is calculated as being 6 per cent, over a trade cycle. It has to be recognised, of course, that many politicians and representative men in Great Britain have argued that a contributory scheme of unemployment insurance expenditure is cheaper and more economical for the nation than the introduction and perpetuation of relief works at the expense of the taxpayer. Such argument appears callously to ignore the facts that, in the one case, the hulk of the money required for the payment of unemployment insurance benefits comes out of industry and thus makes industry all the poorer, while in the second case the whole sum of doles employs nobody and demoralises thousands of those who draw unemployment pay. On several occasions since the war revisions of the scale of unemployment benefit, which at its best is a miserable substitute for work, have been made, and on each occasion the expert investigators of the system emphasised the necessity of guarding against the danger of allowing the scheme “to weaken any concerted effort to get rid of unemployment itself.” This safeguard has been thrust into the background, and will remain there so long as politicians believe that the granting of doles and the establishment of extravagant relief works make an end to unemployment. Curiously enough, among the various parties in the House of Commons, the Labour Party has shown the greatest restraint in making rash promises. It means to get value for money spent on the relief of unemployment. As Mr. Thomas has put it, “there is no bottomless pit from which money can he drawn for expenditure on schemes without regard either to consequences or benefit to the community.” Another opportunity is coming for Mr. Snowden to be firm.