THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1932. BELIEF AND RECOVERY.

Wairarapa Age, 20 December 1932, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1932. BELIEF AND RECOVERY.

In several parts of the country at present, a vigorous agitation is being developed in favour of the more liberal relief of unemployment. Probably no one will deny that the seale of relief pay isjvery meagre and that every possible effort should be made to amend the conditions in which a substantial proportion of the population is at present called upon to exist. There are rather obvious reasons for doubting, however, whether a simple policy of increasing the unemployment allocations would bring about any improvement in the existing state of affairs. Any great increase in the present burden of unemployment relief would be likely, indeed, to do much, more to increase the volume of unemployment than to establish better conditions for those who are out of work. At a meeting in Petone the other day, Mr. W. Nash M.P. said he thought it was the duty of the Government to tax, if necessary, so that all willing to work would be guaranteed a reasonable standard of living. He would exempt from taxation (he said) all incomes up to the level of those of the relief workers, say, £l5O a year. Until all incomes were down to that level, the Government had no right to bring anyone down to the level it was bringing people

to to-day. Under this policy, if it were adopted, unemployment would multiply rapidly and the resources available for the relief of unemployment, or for any other purpose, would diminish at a corresponding rate. With another observation made by Mr. Nash, however, it is possible to express complete agreement. He said that, so long as the country could produce the necessaries of life, it was the duty of the Government to see that all willing to work received these necessaries. Piling on additional taxation for the relief of unemployment is probably the least hopeful method that could be adopted of approaching this objective. The estimated average income of tho Unemployment Board is £73,000 a week, or £3,796,000 a year. Its current expenditure is at the rate

of £83,000 a week, ot upwards of £4,316,000 a year. It is already very definitely a (pestion whether any additional taxation for the relief of unemployment ran be levied and collected in this country that will not be outpaced, perhaps disastrously, by an inc leasing volume of demands for relief. What is really needed is a policy under which better provision will bo made to meet the essential needs of those who are out of work through no fault of their own, and which at the same time will assist and facilitate the general economic recovery on which all ultimate hopes are based. In a country as well ‘fitted as New Zealand is to produce all the necessaries of life, it should be perfectly possible to shape a policy of this kind. An example of one of a number of lines on which such a policy might be developed is the establishment of co-operative group settlements of some 200 families suggested by Mr. -E. Earle Vaile in a pamphlet on *‘Unemployment — Its Causes and Cure." Mr. Vaile's idea is, in brief, that in these settlements the land should be laid out in a large number of plots of from two to ten acres each, and a small number of 50 acre farms for the selected few who may be willing and able to take them up. 41 The main idea,’* he says, ‘‘would be, not to produce goods for sale on a market already oversupplied, but for each settlement to live upon and consume its own produce, in the same manner as the pioneers of this and other countries." No doubt there are practical limits to the application of the idea here indicated, but within these limits it appears to offer results that would be in a happy contrast to much that characterises our present administration of unemployment relief.