PRODUCTIVE WORK HEEDED

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1931, Page 9

PRODUCTIVE WORK HEEDED

NEW ZEALAND’S PROBLEMS

NEW UNEMPLOYMENT BOARD TRIBUTE TO HON. S. G. SMITH DEFICIT OF £250,000 LEFT By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. The opinion- that the new Unemployment Board would have to devote its attention to the promotion of productive works if an increased levy were to be avoided was expressed by one of its members, Mr-. J. S. Jessep, this evening, when 'the retiring representatives presented an enlarged photograph of the old board to the Minister of Labour, the Hon. S. G. Smith, the chairman.

Speakers emphasised the esteem in which Mr. Smith waa held.by those who had beeu grappling with the unemployment problem for the past eight months. Speaking on behalf of the new board at the conclusion of the function, Mr. Jessep said it was fully recognised that those who had done the preliminary work had blazed a trail along which others would have to follow. It has also recognised that if the new board were able to put its ideas into effect it would be made possible by the groundwork of the old hoard.

Ii» would be impossible for the present unemployment expenditure to be continued, Mr. Jessep said, unless some return were secured for the State, or unless there was a return sufficient to provide something for a continuance of the work.

Mr. H. B. Burdekin, -deputy-chair-man of the old board, said, the members desired the Minister to accept the presentation as a sign of their esteem for him and of the way he had conducted the business of the .board during the eight months it had acted. Of the personal relation that had existed between the Minister and the members of the old board one could not speak too highly, Mr. P. J. Small, representative of the primary producers, said every member of the old board appreciated the spirit, of friendship that had grown ,up between those who had been associated for the term of the hoard’s existence. Every member of the board had displayed ability worthy of his appointment and they had tackled in a commendable manner a problem that had defied the solution of economists and others throughout the world. Mr. Smith said he could say with safety that no previous occupant of his office had had to spend such long hours at his desk as he had. It had been said that the Minister was not entirely satisfied with the oldboard, said Mr. Smith, and that if he had been, there would have been no need, to reconstitute the hoard. There had been an insistent demand for a smaller board, however, and great pressure was brought to bear upon the Government to reconstitute the .body and to appoint to it men who were not drawn from any particular source. No possible reflection could be cast on the old board. To-day the demand was that men should be taken out of the cities; the old board had - realised this, but with lack of funds saw that it was not right to take a married man out of town and expect him to keep two homes going while he was on rationed work. The new board came into operation with a deficit of £250,000 left, to it by its predecessor, but that legacy would not have • been handed on had the old board not been faced with the problem of doing great work with a paucity of funds.