Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1934-09-13
JOBS AND DOLES

Energetic, aggressive and thrift
ty people want work. They want
to do something. they want to
create, and they want to feel that
they are useful members of so
ciety. 1t is only natural and it
is the way it should be. So there
fore the unemployment problem
looms as the most important one
confronting the American nation
today. If we are to have prosper
ity we must have work, but even
more important than that is the
morale Of the people. 1t is not
enough for the government to
feed, clothe and provide shelter
for the unemployed, meager as it
may be, but work must be pro-
vided now that private industry
is not bringing it about. A living
without work will bring on lazi-
ness and in time will make drift
ers and carefree individuals out
of those who continue on the re-
lief rolls.
Concerning this important ques-
tion the St. Paul Daily News of
Tuesday carried a most excellent
editorial under the caption of
Jobs and DoleS" which follows:
Harry L. Hopkins promise that the
federal government must and will
evolve a distinctly American method
of dealing with the stupendous prob
lem of unemployment relief. and will
not be content to copy some European
system, is a bright bit of good news.
If anything has been made clear by
postwar European experiences in this
field, it is that just to keep the job
less men from starving is not enough.
That has to be done, of course, in
simple humanity. But unless unem-
ployment relief goes beyond that, it
simply creates a new problem without
solving the old one.
England's long years of dole illus
trates the point.
The dole has been a great drain
on the English treasury, and it has
been a feeble and back-handed way
of meeting a very serious issue. 1t
was the least that could have been
done, but it was not nearly enough
To understand this, one need only
read the comments of men who have
travelled across England in recent
years.
Unanimously, they testify to the
destruction of morale which follows
in the train of the dole.
They find, all across England, in
Vulnerable young men who have
grown up to their late 20's without
ever having been employed. By this
time, many of these young men have
got completely used to this kind OF
life.
The dole keeps them from starva.
ton and provides them with few
odd pennies for their recreation
football games, movies, glass of beer
now and then, and so on.
In many, many cases these young
men have lost the desire to work
They have never known anything but
a life of pointless idleness; it has
come to seem the normal thing to
them, and the wish to get out and
stand on their own feet has atrophieG
and died.
Such young men, when they appear
in large numbers, constitute one OF
the most tragic problems any nation
can face. They are rapidly becoming
unemployable. Even the return Of
full prosperity would leave them as q
solid, more or less indigestive lump
in the economic body,
That is the sort of problem a ma
ton creates for itself when it con.
fines it's unemployment relief program
of unemployment relief payments.
Something more must be done
Jobs, in other words, must be created
no matter how impossible it may
seem to do it. We can not avoid the
responsibility of keeping jobless mel
from starving-but unless we go be
yond that, and give them chance
to support themselves, we shall builC
up a great deal of trouble for our
selves.