The Star. THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1892. The Government and the Unemployed.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7179, 14 January 1892, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1892. The Government and the Unemployed.

To please the Conservatives is by no meant an easy thing for a Liberal Government, The fact that a Littoral Government adopts a certain course of action is sufficient to make the Conservatives denounce that course with the utmost vehemence. Again and again have we seen it SBked by the Conservative Presß— What has the present Government, which professes to be the friend of the working men of New Zealand, done for the working men P The answer to that question is readily found. A correspondent of the Wellington Posf gives it when he writes : — " In six months over two thousand men found employment through the Bureau of Industries." But the Conservatives are not without a rejoinder to this reply. They were quite prepared to be told that the Government had given employment to a large number of men who otherwise wouldhave been unable to findthe means to support themselves and their families during the winter and spring months. They were prepared, because they knew that the reply stated nothing more than the truth. Uat they now make the charge that the Government by thus giving employment has so relieved the labour

market that farmers are unable to engage the labourers they require in the time of the harvest. Nothing can well be more characteristic of the Conservative economist than such a charge. In order that the farmers may be able to pay interest on their mortgaged land it is necessary that they should have cheap labour ; in order that labour may be cheap, it must be abundant ; in order that it may be abundant, working men muat b« unemployed for half the year, 60 that they may eagerly take the first bid for their services. There is another objection raided to the Government finding employment for, working men. It is an objection which really reflects' great credit on the genius who discovered it. "We are toW that the Benevolent Institution Trust, of Wellington, has been compelled to borrow £500 or JE6OO to support the wives and families of the men for whom the Government Labour Bureau had found work. In other words those men who are earning such extravagantly high wages that they will not work for the farmers at the ordinary rate of pay are lees able to support their families than they would be if they were unemployed, and therefore receiving no wages. It ia a question of inability not of unwillingness ; for the authorities have it in their power to force from men who have the means sufficient for the maintenance of their familie?. The complaint now made amounts to the assertion that the family of a man who ie out of work will not require any assistance from the Charitable Aid Board, but that the moment a man is in the receipt of wages, and good wages too, his family becomes a burden on |tho

connamrity. Can any aroertion t* awre ab•nra,esu any argument founded on such an assertion have the slightest weight in convincing the people of New Zealand that the present Government i» not sincere in its desire to serve the interests of the working men ?