BACK TO NORMAL WORK.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 November 1934, Page 4

BACK TO NORMAL WORK.

The decision of the Unemployment Board to suspend the 4A scheme and to refuse relief wbrk to single men capable of undertaking fafm Wdrk has not Come any too sdon. Otago reports a shortage of men for road Works; at Wellington there is, according to the Technical College authorities, ho longer a “juvenile unemployment” problem; in the ManaWatu district there is a shortage of farm labour. Judging from advertisements id the Daily News, that condition applies also in Taranaki, and it is reported that in the Auckland province there is a similar shortage, inquiries by the Unemployment Board have made it only too evident that What careful observers feared might be the outcome Of the existing systems Of relief has come to pass. Those observers feared that the time would come When relief Work would be preferred to normal occupation, that habits of indifference towards the future would be formed, and that OS a result the problem of unemployment would become permanent. -If this tendency is being developed the authorities are justified in doing .all in their power to arrest it. Leaving aside those who are physically unfit for farm work, and the farmers who on account of temperament or circumstances are unfit to be employers of labour, there Still remain on the one hand men seeking normal employment and on the other farmers willing to provide it. If a relief system prevents the co-ordination of those circumstances it is creating rather than relieving employment problems, and this fact is apparently being recognised by the Unemployment Board.