THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1931, Page 15

THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM.

(To the Editor). 1 Sir, —I noticed in a report of the Waimate County Council a very good suggestion by Mr. Long re work for the unemployed, and I think there is a lot in it. Pretty well all the work is quite good and in many cases quite necessary, still i there i* very little that would increase our exports, - whereas ..clearing gorse and draining -swamps would increase returns and be a lasting improvement. At the same time, as he says, it would not be fair to charge it. on to everybody; it is only fair-that where the place is improved the owner should pay the interest on it. The mortgagee’s security would be better and there would not be the feeling, among the workers tjjat their work jyas going to benefit somebody else and improve the farm at, the country’s expense, And also it would .giver. i»,/feeling that they were doing something of use. Nothing sickens a good man so much as to think he is only killing time. At any rate something will have to be done, and that quickly. Unemployment looks as if it is going to be Worse than ever what with, the last drop in wool and dry weather. Already two or three .dairy companies are reducing labour, a thing we have not known for years, arid it is unthinkable that in some of our cities there are people almost 'starving with the price of meat as it is. If it was handled on business lines it : would at the present time 1 be quite possible to buy fore-quarters of beef from freezing works at a lb; that would he 12s 6d for 1001 b. But the works are buying quite good meat, that has to pass the inspector, at 7s 6d; also fat ewea at 7e to Bs, but cow beef and bullocks at 15s to 17s 6d. Of course one cause of unemployment is machinery. Take ensilage. Instead of, as it used to be, 12 or 14 men and six or eight horses, now about five men and a boy or two and three or four horses and an old car fitted with a sweep, in many instances, are doing as much as three sweeps, horses and drivers, and no forkers, only a rake. As another instance •take the oil boats. They used to require 00 to 70 men to discharge, lasting two or three days; then lorries to take to the merchants’, warehouses, etc. Now it is pumped out to tanks; from there railway tankers take the oil. There •is no labour. Take the Wellington ferry service. In the old days coal had to be won and shipped to Wellington and then put on the boats; quite a small army being employed. Then again there were about 40 firemen but the oil burners only require engineers and cleaners. I may say the firemen were responsible to a great extent for the change as the Union Company never knew when the men were going to strike, and night after night there was trouble. The same thing applies everywhere. But machines have come to stay, so some other way must be found to get over the unemployment trouble. Again reverting to what Mr. Long said at the county council meeting, as I understand it, he did not mean that if they had, say, 20 men on they would be on all the time, but that, say, they had three days a week men they would put in their three days and then their places would be taken by another 10t,.50 that the work would go on all the time and yet not exceed the allotted money. But the two days a week is no good to anybody as 27s is barely enough to buy tucker and clothes. My reasoning is for the work to go on all the time, for that it would be necessary in a gang of 20 or more men to have a capable man in charge, and I may say, speaking as an old contractor, that in this case it requires a man with a bit of tact as well as knowledge to work a go-ng of men, as it should always be remembered that in many cases these men are not on relief work through their own fault but just the fortune of war. As one of our leadin<r men said the other day, if half the .farmers of the North Island were pressed just now half would go through and the balance would be looking through the bars. I think he was about right. But if the idea as suggested by Mr. Long was followed up properly instead of unemployment being altogether a drag it would benefit the country at large. ' . „ ■.—■■•• Suppose, as I know is the case in some instances, a man has a farm of 100 acres, he has really perhaps only 75 acres actually producing. Suppose it would require £lOO to clear the land, and the owner was charged 7 per cent, on the monev, that would only be, as I make it, 5s Bd"an awe.for land that was? perhaps

worse than useless. The owner would be paying for it and also the rates, and increasing production, thus again hel,» ing the country. It must not thought that because we have a world-wide slump on now we are down and out. In my life in New Zealand of well over 50 odd years I have seen four slumps, but we always got our heads up again. Though it is nasty medicine I think it will teach a' lot of us to be more careful/—I am, etc.; ' OLD FARMER. Manaia.. ■