Unemployment in Australia. (1928)

From the May 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Melbourne.

26/12/27.

A Letter from the Socialist Party of 
Australia.

While Australia is being boomed abroad —by emigration touts—as a paradise for the workers, and thousands are flocking to her shores in search of work, in the capital cities the unemployed are marching the streets, registering at the Government Labour Bureaus, and sending deputations to the State Governments asking for sustenance or work.

All the old fallacies that have done service for the last century are being trotted out by the pen-valets, politicians and other hangers-on of the Capitalist class. Free Trade and protection hold pride of place, although in countries in which either of these fiscal policies is in operation, unemployment still remains a problem.

According to Steads Review, June, 1927, the figures submitted by the League of Nations demonstrated that the percentage of unemployed in Australia was greater than any other nation associated with the League.

The following figures were given by Mr. Tunnecliffe, deputy leader of the Victorian Labour Government: That from 6 to 9 per cent. of the workers of the Commonwealth are workless all the time. This represents 136,000 workers.

When the Labour Government came into power in Victoria, it set out valiantly to deal with unemployment, but after six months unemployment is worse than ever. The Premier’s (Mr. Hogan’s) explanation is that the sole cause of the unemployment problem is the adverse trade balance. One million pounds of the imports were clothes, and in this the workers themselves were the guilty parties. For a working man to wear imported clothes is sheer stupidity. 

For “sheer stupidity” this would be hard to beat, for during the year 1925-26 the total factory production for Australia amounted to £400,342,392, while wages were £86,724,683. It should be obvious, even to Mr. Hogan, that if the workers bought Australian goods with all their wages, a surplus of £313,617,710 would remain for the employers to sell. In spite of the inroads upon this by our masters, there still remains a surplus that must be disposed of in the markets of the world. But production the world over has outstripped all markets, hence the glut and world-wide unemployment. 

One of Mr. Hogan’s supporters, Mr. Hayes, has another view. He says that the failure of past (Nationalist) Governments to give consideration to the problem of unemployment was the cause of so many being out of work to-day. Yet in Queensland, where a Labour Government has been in power for twelve years, unemployment has been so bad that it has been found necessary to increase the contributions to the unemployment insurance fund.

A few weeks ago the Nationalists routed the Labour Party in New South Wales, and the workers were told that a time of prosperity was in store for them; since then the police have dispersed the unemployed with batons. Nationalism hold sway in South Australia, where 2,000 railway workers have been put off by the Government to swell the already swollen ranks of the unemployed.

There are many who think the present conditions are transitory, and that with the further development of Australia they will improve; but they are doomed to disappointment. Capitalism here is developing hothouse fashion. The Flinder’s Lane wholesalers, whose name a few years ago was synonymous with solidity, to-day find themselves in a financial quicksand through the development of the departmental stores. The establishment of large industrial concerns from England and America is making for the most scientific methods of production, with the consequent crushing out of the small and inefficient factories and the reduction of those employed.

But the most glaring instance of the displacement of labour by machinery is in the farming industry. The cry of those who formerly had an easy solution for unemployment by advising the workless to go to the country instead of hanging round the cities, has a fitting answer in the following) figures from The Age, 23/2/27:

“ In 1915-16, 213,719 individual farmers employed 259,409 persons, farming 28,883,364 acres, which produced crops valued at £75,475,427. In 1924-25 the number of individual farmers had decreased to 207,046, a reduction of 6,673, and the number of employees had fallen to 219,917, or 39,492 fewer than in 1915-16.

“ The acreage farmed 1924-26, however, was 33,156,308, an increase of 4,272,944 on the acreage of nine years previously, and the value of the produce was £107,096,393, which was £31,620,966 more than the value of the crops in 1915-16.”

Since then the Production Bulletin No. 20 gives the number of displaced farm hands, 1924-25 to 1925-26, as 15,255.

The Age proceeds: 

“ . . . and, as this machinery has been invented to meet the special requirements of Australian farmers, it is enabling them to produce more with a gradually decreasing volume of paid labour . . . Factories are making for the farmers machinery . . . To the employees in these factories farmers sell their produce in the best market in the world. Prosperity is interdependent; prosperity is mutually shared.”

This effusion is put forth as if it were a truth so rare that it would be sacrilege to doubt it. The Age conveniently forgets about the 39,492 farm workers while it talks about prosperity for the implement workers. But is the implement worker in as enviable a position as The Age would have us believe. The implement making industry is already being carried on “with a gradually decreasing volume of paid labour,” as the following figures from the Commonwealth Year Book will prove :—

From 1915 to 1924-25, percentage of increase of employees was 53.49 per cent., while in the same period the total production rose by 152.67 per cent., and the year 1923- 24 to 1924-25 saw the enormous increase of £149,701 with a reduction of 49 employees.

Thus we see the object of Capitalism is to increase the output with a constantly diminishing number of employees. Such a condition of affairs may be satisfactory for those who own the means of wealth production, but to the wage slave it means misery and ruin. And all the noise of the workers, employed or unemployed, the protests, the shouting, “We want work,” the street processions, the deputations to Slipper-tongue, the Premier, who will either turn them away with soft words or the policemen’s club, will not alter the economic laws of Capitalism.

While the working class is content to support Capitalism, it is getting the only possible result. There is only one course, and that—to understand that the gigantic means of production, which the workers operate to turn out wealth in abundance, must become the common property of society, to be used in the interest of the whole of society instead of in the interest of the Capitalist class as at present.

J. S.