The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 1932. A RATIONING IMPASSE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 493, 30 June 1932, Page 10

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 1932. A RATIONING IMPASSE.

THE IMPASSE that has been reached between the Unemployment Board and the Hospital Board in regard to the issue of rations to employable men calls for an explanation from the chairman of the Unemployment Board. It is an indication, first of all, of irresolution and some evasion in regard to the Board’s responsibilities towards employable men, following the altogether indefensible attitude taken up by the Minister that all but able-bodied men fit to go into camps should be thrown on to the hands of the Hospital Boards. The position to-day is that the Hospital Boards, having budgeted for no more ration relief than would carry them past the present quarter, have refused to incur large overdrafts on work that is clearly the responsibility of the Unemployment Board, and it is time that all the cards were placed on the table, primarily in the interests of the unemployed, who cannot be made the victims of mismanagement of this description. A plain statement ought to be made as to the responsibility for issuing rations to employable men, and this the Unemployment Board has failed to do. A LEGAL ANOMALY. Tj'Oß UNQUESTIONING complacency some of the writers on English law have been without rival. Coke wrote that the common law was “ the absolute perfection of reason,” and two and a half centuries later Chief Baron Pollock wrote that “ the common law of England is really nothing more than the highest good sense.” It will be noted, however, in a very interesting case in England in which a widow is contesting her husband’s will in an estate worth £1,250,000 that there is a possibility', if earlier wills are not upheld, that the widow may be cut off with the proverbial shilling. As a matter of fact, under the English law, she has no right to claim maintenance, as she would have under New Zealand law, and also under Scottish law, under the Testator’s Family Maintenance Act. This is one of the directions in which English law, which in Coke’s words was “ grounded upon the law of God,” seems to have leaned rather to Mosaic ideas of a husband’s proprietary rights in his wife—ideas, by the way, which are expressly repudiated in the New Testament—than to considerations of “ the highest good sense and reason ” and least of all humanitarianism. PUTTING THE CLOCK BACK, TT SEEMS THAT all our economic ills, in the opinion of Mr 11. D. Acland, are to be laid at the door of the arbitration system which, lie says, has “ brought misery to New Zealand,” has led to “ the unhealthy growth of big towns for which at no time has there been any real economic necessity,” and has presented the Government with “ the almost insoluble problem of finding a remedy to prevent thousands of good and deserving people from starving.” Mr Acland has certainly gone the whole hog in his search for an economic scapegoat, but the fallacy of his argument is almost too palpable to comment on. As a matter of fact, he is still thinking along the lines of Conservative policy in .pre-Seddonian days, and he has quite failed to take the larger view of New 7 Zealand’s reasonable aspirations as a young and virile nation. It is absurd to blame the

arbitration system for a depression which has affected countries that have never heard of such a system, and it is equally absurd to say that for the first time for a generation employers and workers will meet on equal terms with a view to settling the terms of employment. While everybody hopes that both parties to industrial disputes will recognise the necessity of equitable agreements being arrived at, it is incorrect to say that the parties will meet on equal terms. The unscrupulous employer lias an opportunity that the great majority of employers do not approve of, and without recourse to arbitration no dispute is capable of adjustment by the best constitutional means.