TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20785, 21 April 1939, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

“Abiding Weariness” Americans have read with great interest, says an American paper, a report by the Canadian Welfare Council, which, dealing with the depression in Canada, said: “An abiding weariness, a fatigue seems to be upon the land, a grim acceptance on the part of tlie taxpayer that relief is here to stay —a terrible, tragic apathy on the part of the people that ‘Well, we’ll never get work, again, anyway’.” The report goes on to point out that since 1930 Canada has spent £200,000,000 on relief of the unemployed and distressed. By way of contrast, the United States, with about ten times the population of Canada, has spent fifty times the money spent by Canada without having solved a single major problem having to do with unemployment and distress. It is siu-h weakening of the national stamina which alarms Mr Fred I. Kent, one of the country’s leading financiers and economists. It has given rise to all sorts of demands for pensions and relief, which prompt Air Kent to say: “What gives concern to those who are opposed to the present trend is the belief that the ideas which are being put forward and the laws being created to meet them will curtail production instead of increasing it —thereby lowering the standard of living of all the people, which, in turn, will foment discontent and destroy the opportunity for comfort in living to many millions of persons. These social security ideas can be fulfilled only by excessive taxation and through greatly increasing the labour of those who must work to develop sufficient production to take care not only of themselves, but also of those who will be withdrawing goods from the great general pool without serving to replace them in any way or to any degree.”