ORGANISING CAMPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 234, 3 October 1931, Page 8

ORGANISING CAMPS.

The idea of camps for the unemployed is so sound, and the need for doing something for this class is so pressing, that it would be a tragedy if this scheme fell through owing to Jack of imagination or capacity. Surely it is not a difficult thing for this country to organise camps for single men. We have all the experience of the territorial system and of the war to draw upon, and the engineers of the Public "Works Department have been doing this kind of thing all their lives. Tet ; a report on the camp recently established for unemployed single men at Hill Top, Canterbury, is painful reading. According. to . a member of the Christchureh Citizens' Unemployment Committee who. visited the camp with some of his colleagues, 75 men are "living in a puddle-hole —a cheerless, drab, ill-managed concern." Conditions, he says, are shocking. Mud is inches deep over everything; only one tent has a floor; the sanitaryi arrangements are unsatisfactory; the men, who are ill-clothed and ill-shod, come in at night wet through and go to bed in that state; there is not even a candle in the camp; there is no provision . for illness; and the men are thoroughly dispirited. "Everybody is boss and nobody can do anything." In short, if this is not an exaggeration, Hill Top camp might be taken as. an example of how not to do it. Such a camp should be organised on semi-military lines. If the country cannot afford to> give these unemployed more than shelter, food and ten shillings a week, it can at least see that they are properly housed and their lives made reasonably comfortable in other respects. Men who live in deplorable conditions such as are described in this report are liable to sink into a state of revolt or despair, either of which is bad for them and the community. The Government must see to it that the conditions at Hill Top are immediately remedied and not repeated elsewhere. ;