NEGLECTED GARDENS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 39, 15 February 1934, Page 5

NEGLECTED GARDENS.

RELIEF WORKERS' STRIKE. VEGETABLES MAY BE LOST. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) GISBORNE, this day. A complaint that the relief workers, on account of the strike, would not even attend to the gardens in which vegetables are being grown for their own benefit, was made at a meeting of the Gisborne Borough Council. It was stated that vegetables, worth hundreds of pounds, were likely to be ruined through lack of attention. - "Unless labour is put on the gardens the vegetables will simply rot, and be a dead loss," remarked the Mayor, Mr. J. Jackson. "The work will have to be done, even if we have to pay for it." Mr. H. Holmes pointed out that the gardens were established solely for the benefit of the unemployed. An immense amount of good had been done for the relief of distress, and it was absolutely wrong that men should refuse to help themselves. The only Labour member of the council, Mr. H. J. Hall, remarked that |he understood that the work was being done by voluntary labour, but he was assured that was not the case. The Mayor said that before the strike the gardens had been in excellent order, and the head gardener -was justifiably proud of the results. Now the gardens were picketed, and any men willing to work were described as "scabs." The only volunteer labour that the men had done was to collect vegetables when they were requL ■ 1