THE UNEMPLOYED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 159, 3 June 1884, Page 2

THE UNEMPLOYED.

We attribute no significance w hat ever to the cry of the unemployed m Dunedin. As our contemporary the Wellington Post obstrves, a demonstration of this kind has come to be regularly looked for every year, but people now are coming to regard it as the result of some political wire-pul-ling- rather than as emanating from real working men who are m distress. It is always easy to get up an openair meeting of unemployed m a citj like Dunedin, and then use it as a means of putting pressure on the Government, or on Parliament, to co on with, say, the Otago Central Railway. Dunedin prohalily likes iS unemployed too well to part with them, and it wants them to be piovided with work there, so that if the men benefit directly by getting work the place may benefit indirectly by get ting the work done, and enjoying the consequent expenditure. If there if real distress existing by reason of want of work, then of course it should be relieved, but if the cry of unemployed is put forward no«", as it has been before, simply to force expenditure on unproductive works, then the Government should firmly refuse to yield m any way. It is still more significant that many of these " distressed " working men refused to accept work up country when it was offered them. This happened before. They will not leave the town, preferring agitation to honest labour.