I am supporting this motion moved by the members of the Labour Party. At the same time, I am wondering if the House has forgotten that the Labour Party themselves were parties to the increase in the cost of commodities which they now, apparently deprecate. I am glad to welcome the change of front on behalf of the Labour Party. They state in this motion that during the last two years the retail prices of commodities normally used in working-class homes have been raised substantially. I agree with them, but those who have eyes to see and ears to hear must remember that the signatories to this motion themselves contributed very largely to the tragedy that has overtaken this country in the shape of unemployment, as well as an increase in the cost of commodities.
Now, I want to point out that the position of the unemployed in Cork City can only be described as very bad, and very tragic in some cases. Many men willing and able to work are unable to procure employment, and many of those persons, honest, decent, respectable working men, are not able to come within the provisions of the Unemployment Assistance Acts because it has been suggested that they are not genuinely seeking work. I know that great hardship has been inflicted on many of those persons who are justly entitled to the benefits which should accrue to them under the Unemployment Assistance Acts, but they are debarred from receiving benefit because of the reason I have mentioned. Perhaps the Minister might, at some future date, devise some other means than those at present adopted to discover whether a man is genuinely seeking employment. I must emphasise that great hardships have been inflicted through the operation of that particular clause.
I am sure I will be joined by the members of the Labour Party and the official Opposition in the remark that none of us would agree to encourage the type of person who is not genuinely seeking employment. In that connection I want to say that many of the unemployed, both in Dublin and Cork, do not quite understand the position by which public bodies are faced. Members of public bodies are frequently charged with neglecting their duty because they do not provide employment for unemployed persons. I will give as an instance, the cases of the Cork Corporation and the Cork Harbour Commissioners. They were blamed for not having created work, for not having started large schemes of work. Those bodies, as the Minister is aware, are governed by statute, and they are not allowed by statute to break up property or indulge in certain public works without an inquiry being held and certain preliminaries gone through.
In the case of the Cork Harbour Commissioners I would like to give an extract from a report issued by a special sub-committee set up to inquire into the losses sustained by the Cork Harbour Commissioners over a period of years. That special sub-committee was presided over by a member of the Minister's Party. I will quote one or two paragraphs from the report to show that the revenue of the port has been seriously affected owing to the operation of the Government's present economic policy:—
"The revenue of the port, which in 1930 was £96,964, had fallen by 1935 to £78,617. This decline is due to reduced imports and exports, particularly imports of maize, flour, fruit, artificial manures, cattle-feeding stuffs, sugar, and exports of live stock, eggs and bacon. Messrs. H. Ford & Son, Ltd., also ceased to export cars and tractors, and the oil entrepot trade at Haulbowline was closed down.
"Those responsible for the management of the port of Cork could do nothing to prevent this decline, which was almost entirely due to national policy, over which they have no control."
Later on, we have the following:—
"When Haulbowline dockyard was working normally, it employed 1,000 manual workers from the Cobh and Passage areas. As late as 1927, the local expenditure at Rushbrooke docks was £75,000 per annum. All this has ceased."
I suggest to the Minister that he should give serious consideration to the facts related in this document, and to inquire has the City of Cork got anything to compensate it for this loss. As a result of this policy in Cork, we have numbers of men unemployed; we have the workers in the Cork Harbour Commissioners' yard working for a considerable period on short time, something like a week about. We have had them working a five-day week up to recently; the employers were then able to restore them to a full six days, and the position will be again reviewed at the end of June next.
The operatives in most of the tariffed industries are, naturally, because of the high cost of living, looking for increased wages. From time to time we hear of the turbulent character of some of these people who look for increased wages, but who can blame any worker, organised or unorganised, when he finds the cost of living going up from day to day, looking for an advance in wages in order to meet that increased cost of living? It appears to me we are going to follow that very vicious circle begun during the Great War period, when prices were rising from day to day. There was only one reaction to that on the part of the working people, and that was to look for still further increases in wages to meet the increased cost of living. I think the Minister will agree it is the only natural reaction.
When the purchasing power of the £ goes down to something like 14/- or 15/-, it is high time the workers in industries should look for increased wages, and, in turn, these increases are passed on to the consumer. The position, as I find it to-day, is this, that we are creating a newly-rich merchant class who are exploiting the working class in a way the old ascendancy class never did. It appears, also, that the newly-rich, the new ascendancy class, possess most of the vices and very few of the virtues of the much abused old ascendancy gang.