RELIEF IN AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 306, 28 December 1931, Page 7

RELIEF IN AMERICA.

Sam of £26,000,000 Subscribed By Citizens. FIFTY BASK FAILURES. XEW YORK. December 26. Tie people of America celebrated the : r leanest Christmas for a decade. It was a Chrktmas void of every feature of those sensationally prosperous years when there were millions of bonuses. Wall Street houses' end of the year profit-sharing for holders of stock in large corporations and vast Christmas dub sayings. The sole outstanding financial feature of Christmas rH* year was the extraordinary number of bank failures, possibly 50 institutions, large and small, having closed their doors in the past week." AH over the country business continues at a low ebb. Merchants throughout the Tiarfrvrt complain of small sale? in spite of pre-Christmas price-cutting. The unemployed in industry are known to exceed T,000,000. and further reductions in wages in the larger industries seem likely. Every effort was made to reduce actual suffering, and a sum of probably 130.000,000 dollars {about £2(5,000,000) was raised throughout the country for relief. A special effort was made to extend this relief directly to householders, but this evening- in New York and other larger cities of America there were bread lines many squares long, the applicants stancinrr in the icy cold streets waiting for coffee sandwiches handed out from lorries. On naval vessels at many of the ports Christmas parties for. children were given ant? thousands were entertained in this manner. It is estimated that 1.000,000 persons were fed by charity organisations in 2iew York alone. The picture .throughout the country was a depressing one. There was the usual number of Christmas Day shootings, crabbings and- murders and 38 deaths from poison. One hundred people were sent to hospital suffering from the effects of bad liquor, and six died.