RELIEF WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 273, 18 November 1927, Page 9

RELIEF WORK.

LIFE IN A BUSH CAMP.

A CLERK'S EXPERIENCE.

HARD WORK AND SMALL PAY.

(By AMATEUR NAVVY.)

(No. I.)

Only those who earn, whilst in regulai employment, barely sufficient to suppor themselves and those dependent 01 them can realise the feeling of hopeless dismay which obsesses one of theii number when he is informed that his "services are no longer required." Ont unlucky evening, my employer informed me that he was taking another son intc partnership and that son would be able when he joined the firm, to do the work I had been doing. Therefore, 1 had better look around for another job. Finding a clerical job is not the easiest task one can be set, and at the end of a fortnight being then out of work and not knowing where to obtain employment, I wrote a somewhat frantic letter to the Department of Labour stating that I would willingly accept any conditions of toil sooner than remain idle. The Department was good enough to send a telegram instructing me to report to the overseer at a relief works camp some fifteen miles from where I happened to be staying. I found that a motor lorry, carrying stores, was leaving i the township late that afternoon for i the camp, and the farmer-driver was willing to take me as a passenger. | Off to Camp.

About half-past five the lorry lef town, the farmer and his wife occupying the cab, and another unfortunate seekei after a job and myself squatting among the miscellaneous goods at the back o he truck. We journeyed for some milei >ver metalled roads, then over the claj md dirt. The evening became bitterh »ld, and as the lorry chugged anc ihurned through the mud and water nany times offering to slip off the nar •ow track, over the bank, and into thi ■iver, there was time to reflect what j surious business life is and how des jerately difficult it sometimes is to fine vays and means of living at all. Yet f the lorry did slip none of us on it ioon might be living at all. What was i relief works camp like? How would he overseer receive us? What work, ii my, would be offered? When we did irrive at the camp it was too dark to iee much other than the lights showing hrough the canvas of the tents and the iparks from the chimneys of the few >hat had been fitted with fireplaces. Men •rowded around the lorry inquiring for ettere, papers and parcels of. bread and neat, while we two out-of-works

walked to the overseer's hut. I produced my telegram from the Department of Labour, and was told there was plenty of work to be done. Tent Life.

There were about twenty tents, and a half tent-half hut sort of shelter, in which the men could board at a cost of 22/ per week, in the main camp. Another half dozen or so new tents, without fireplaces, were in a cluster a few hundred yards away. The latter were all unoccupied, and another man and myself were told we could take up quarters in any of them—two men being berthed in one tent. We chose one that had some dry ti-tree laid on the wooden bunks. The tent was boarded on three sides to a height of two feet, but the front was not boarded pending the erection of a fireplace and chimney.! The floor space, eight feet by ten feet, was bare earth, and the sole furniture was the two 6ft by 2ft Gin bunks.

I dined that night in the cook-shelter off cold tinned meat and hot potatoes, bread and butter, and tea out of a kerosene tin. The tea was brewed in the tin, I drank it out of an enamelled imug. The table was of bare unplaned boards and the seats were 6in. planks. The meals were cooked at an open fireplace, and one could watch the service and the washing up. The fastidious would describe these processes as —well, not nice. Should you desire another mug of tea your unwashed mug was plunged into the tin. Often the cloths on which the washed utensils were dried were so damp and dirty-chocolate-coloured that it seemed waste of time to use them at all. The catering and everything about that cook-shelter was rough. I bought a packet of candles from the caterer, and went "home" to my ti-tree bed and damp rugs.

The next morning (Sunday), having I no kerosene tine, I washed in the running water of the river. The übiquikerosene tin is one of the most I cherished possessions of the man in a relief works camp. In it he draws water, cooks his food, boils his clothes; out of it he bathes or, rather, sponges himself down—he can get his feet into it. Some men arrive in camp with nothing other than what they stand up in. Such a one slept for two nights in my tent. He had not the means of keeping himself warm or clean. I did not like to offer to lend my soap and a towel—he might have resented it. The first night he went to bunk in the dark. , The second night he managed to borrow some bed covering. I was glad, as I , had* not enough rugs to keep myself , properly warm. One can never be sure what sort of!

poor human derelict one shares a tent

with in a relief works camp. There are not many subjects of conversation in camp, and the terms of speech used become monotonously inane. The chief matter for discussion is the alleged attempt being made to lower national wages by encouraging private employers to offer no more than relief works rates of pay. I cannot truthfully say that the rulers of New Zealand are popular among those who dwell in tenta.