UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1930, Page 7

UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM

INSURANCE . -BLACK DAY FOR DOMINION? 'The view that New Zealand should profit by the experience of Great Britain in regard to unemployment insurance was expressed by Mr. Albert Spencer, president of the Auckland Provincial Employers’ Association. -It will be. a black day in New ZealaihT if any unemployment insurance is passed,”'he said. “It means setting up a new Government department, employing an army of officers to carry out the work and every year the benefits would be increased and the cost to the country. would be a heavy annual tax. In a young country like New Zealand, where the| conditions totally differ from those in Great Britain, unemployment insurance if introduced would be a blight and a, curse to the workers and the country. It would cripple industry, pauperise the workers, destroy all independence, initiative and self-reliance, would create less respect to employers and gradually create a nation of beggars and inefficient loafers demanding as their right to be fed. ’’England has had more ‘ca’ canny,’ more agitation, and more unemployment since t)ie workers have received economic security against starvation than she had. before. The real problem of unemployment is how to expand our secondary industries, to provide the maximum of employment and so to treat the unemployed that they remain efficient workers, ready and keen to get back tc any honest work that presents itself or can be found. “As a new country, full of possibilities’, we in New’ Zealand seem to do moie to handicap our productive industries, more to dry up the well springs of employment and less to encourage wagepavi g enterprises. Let us get busy aiid encourage the growth and development of new industries and improve the econcmical working of the present ones.