CORRESPONDENCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18659, 30 August 1930, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE.

WAKE UP NEW ZEALAND. To the Editor of the “ Timaru Herald.” Sir, —The outlook in New Zealand will be serious unless the people wake up and realise the grave results which must arise from the faulty manner in which we are dealing with the unemployment problem. One of the first results of our policy of paying full wages to the unemployed on relief works was a considerable increase in the number of people who alleged that they were in need of relief. There is abundant evidence that hundreds of men left jobs on farms to take advantage of the easier and better paid relief work, thus we see the Gilbertian position of a growing number of unemployed on the one hand and an outcry for labour on farms on the other. Some of the world’s best economists say that unemployment will never be really alleviated in these countries which have adopted an unsound policy, and judging by New Zealand’s experience this appears correct, for our policy has aggravated rather than alleviated the situation. Even assuming that the problem is a permanent one, which we do not admit, it is obvious that a vast public expenditure is no remedy, for the simple reason that it can’t be indefinitely continued. It is axiomatic that spending public funds raised by increased taxation will necessarily reduce the amount available for private industry, leaving no escape from the dilemma that such expenditure must reduce the employment which private enterprise can provide, and throw more men on to the public funds. ‘‘lt is futile.” as one authority has pointed out, “to divert the nation’s capital from its proper function, as to attempt to increase the length of a stick by cutting pieces off one end and fastening them on the other”: the net result is to weaken the stick and diminish it by the wastage in cutting and piecing. If the present policy of huge public expenditure is continued, the burdens will be carried beyond the breaking point, and increased unemployment must result, until the process, carried to its logical conclusion, will cause the whole working population to be employed by public authorities, and private enterprise which alone i can provide the money will cease to exist. The great delusion seems to be ! that the national purse is inexhaustI ible, like the widow’s cruse. To find em--1 ployment for all workers through in- , dustry means an increase in producj tion, but the difficulty the Government has to face is that production cannot be increased while its proceeds are unI saleable, because costs are too great to enable it to meet the world’s market. The way to recovery is through lower costs, but the present huge Government expenditure and the payment of an uneconomic relief wage serves to maintain the high costs and will even tend to raise them. The writing is on the wail if only the people would read it. High, machine-made wages regardless of production, whether in private industry or public relief works, only intensify the trouble, and as the Federation of Trades Unions report (in England) states, the wage-earners are, and will be, the greatest sufferers. Relief work should receive only reasonable sustenance wages so as to make it less attractive, and this would encourage men to take up more productive and fully-paid work when available.—We are, etc., N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE Wellington, August 27.