CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 January 1932, Page 12

CORRESPONDENCE

DEFINITE PLAN'S NEEDED. (To the Editor.) Sir, —I noticed your leading article re unemployment. It is about time that the Government made some definite move to do something. It is weeks since the election, and there does not seem to be anything done, but here it is the middle of summer, the height of the seasonable time for work, and see the thousands out of work. What will it be in another three or four months unless something is done, and that at once ? I suppose when the House sits as usual there will be a week or a month spent in talk instead of getting right at it. Nearly all the work round the towns, necessary and unnecessary, is done and not producing an extra sixpence worth of real production. I think myself that there is a great deal in Air. Long’s suggestion, as chairman of the Waimate County Council, that the unemployed be put on clearing worse, draining swamps, etc., and the owners charged interest on the amount and loaded on the land. It would not be any hardship as most of that land has to pay interest whether it is growing gorse or is swamp or not, and, the worlcers would have the satisfaction of knowincr they were doing some good. But it is unthinkable that people should be very nearly starving, as is the ease in some of the cities and towns of New Zealand, when fat sheep are being sold in thousands at 7s, good fat cows at £4, bacon pigs at 2d a lb., and porkers at 3Jd. The butchers are not altogether to blaipe for the difference between retail and'wholesale prices. Tallow, hides and sheepskins are very low. Then the town rents are very high. Very few realise that to run a meat delivery van with driver costs anything from £8 to £lO a week. The cause of a lot of the unemployment is that at odfor wool, 5d or 4jd for lamb and high interest charges, it is taking the farmer all his time to live without doing any improvements. In many cases farms are going back. There are many people on good land who would be only too glad to sell to the Government and allow all their money to remain in bonds. A block of 1000 acres of good land would carry 20 families, and that would mean 10 or 12 families in towns extra. It is no good putting small holdings in the backblocks, but even on only medium land it is wonderful with top-dressing what land will do. But it has to be remembered that it is hard to buy good land dear, but a lot harder to buy bad land cheap. I trust that the Government will get to work at once and prepare for 75,000 to 80,000 unemployed this winter, and I think there is a lot of thanks due to the Daily News for its able leader. It is only when the press prints something that hundreds realise what is going on. —I am, etc., OLD FARMER.