DO RELIEF WORKERS REALISE?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 8

DO RELIEF WORKERS REALISE?

My case is probably typical of hundreds — possibly thousands —of the poorer workers who are struggling to keep a family; and from whose rather pitiful wages £8 per year is drawn to help unemployed. Personally, I suffer from two physical injuries, which affect my work; and now, at fifty years of age, find it terribly hard to earn enough to make ends meet. No wireless, no gramophone, no motor car, nor even modest horse and trap for us, and no unemployed committee to send us boots and joints of meat. Always a struggle to raise the money for boots, and for soling old ones. We don't see the moving pictures once in six months, and we waste nothing. All our life insurance provision for old age has matured and is now used up, and often interest on mortgage and insurance premium on a death policy—this last a "dying kick" to try and protect family and wife after my death, have had to be deferred, while we have paid the money away—hard-earned ready cash—to the unemployment fund. We don't [grudge a fair thing, but is this fair? Why take all wo skimped and worked for? What are we to do now the money is all used up? And vet relief workers can grumble if put on piecework. SKINNED OUT.