THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 1932. BELIEF DEMANDS.

Wairarapa Age, 18 May 1932, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 1932. BELIEF DEMANDS.

Apart from any other purpose it may serve, a statement by the DeputyChairman of the Unemployment Board (Mr. J. S. Jessep) which appears in another column to-day should make an end of any idea that the board has a wide financial margin to work upon. Mr. Jessep has given comprehensive and definite particulars of the prospective revenue and obligations of the board. The year’s total income is expected to amount to from £3,500,000 to £3,750,000, as compared with approximately £2,600,000 last year. Though tlie wages tax has been quadrupled, the board has lost the subsidy of pound for pound from the Consolidated Fund it received last year and the amount of the quarterly levy stands unaltered.

As to outgoings, the board is committed to an expenditure of £1,000,000 per annum (outside of Scheme No. 5) on farm development and drainage work, gold mining and the subsidising of industry in an attempt to provide more regular employment. This leaves the board, assuming that the more optimistic estimate of its revenue is realised, with a sum of £2,750,000 for the year, or £52,000 a week, with which to finance relief works for the 48,000 men now employed under the No. 5 Scheme. It will be observed that this averages about £1 Is 8d per liead.

■Little «s the scale of relief thus made possible will commend itself to anybody, any direct attempt to improve upon it, save by local efforts like those that are being made in Masterton and other parts of the Wairarapa, must be accompanied by the suggestion fcf practicable measures of additional taxation. Additional relief can only be made possible by additional taxation and the extent to which the country is at present burdened is known. A vital point which ought to receive practical attention from those who are unemployed as well as from those who are still in employment is that real relief for all concerned can come in no other way than by the revival of normal industry. Even from the standpoint solely of those who are now unemployed, a fuller measure of palliative relief, only made possible by the imposition of further crushing burdens on industry, and probably entailing an extension of unemployment, might be very dearly bought. So far as the local position is concerned, it is undoubtedly only right that substantially the same conditions of relief should be granted as are being applied in the cities. On this point, a definite grievance appears to exist for the time being. The best hope of finding lasting and permanent relief must be sought, however, in throwing the greatest possible enemy into the revival of normal industry and particularly in doing what is possible to ensure the more intensive use of land. The systematic.extension of small holdings and of closer settlement will do more than anything else that can be accomplished in a given time to improve on the conditions at present existing in this country. SUPREME COURT SITTINGS. Not long ago, the Masterton Chamber of Commerce took up from a business standpoint the question of the ; suspension of the local sittings of the Supreme Court, and made representations to the Minister of Justice on the subject. A letter from the Minister which came before the Chamber yesterday states that ho has no power in the matter of reinstating the sittings, which is governed by Section 52' of the Judicature Act, 1908. This may mean that the Chamber is at a dead end so far as direct representations to a responsible authority are concerned, but it certainly does not moan that the teffort to secure the reinstatement of the sittings should be dropped. The Chamber adopted the right course in referring the whole question to the district members of Parliament with a view to seeing what can be done to relieve this district of the serious disadvantage under which it is placed by the suspension of the sittings. The grounds on which, the reinstatement of the sittings is sought have lost nothing of their weight. They are, in brief, that any economy effected by suspending the local sittings is considerably outweighed by additional expense, not to speak of inconvenience, imposed on litigants and otheii-3 in this district having business with the Supreme Court.