PEOPLE'S FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 85, 11 April 1938, Page 11

PEOPLE'S FORUM.

From Our Readers To Our Readers.

COSTLY COLLFCTION OF PETROL TAXES

fTo the Editor.) I

The Government recently took control of the petrol business, fixing the wholesole and resellers' prices. In a recent letter on tlie'subject, I pointed out that the Government tax was just about 1/ per gall"' 1 - One woul.l have thought that out of this tax it would have been reasonable to expect the Government to pay the cost of the administration of the totally unnecessary department they created. All the Government need have done iva« to fix the price and leave it to the wlifle c alers* and retailers' organisation? to see that it was carried out: any breaker could have been reported to the Department. Here was a chance fur more soft jobs and a. further army of inspectors, so it was derided, not with the approval or consent of the wholesalers or the retailers, to create the department,. A spec ial license fee on top of all others, of per pump per year was fixed. There are about- 12,000 pumps in the Dominion, plus £10 per million gallons to he paid by the wholesalers, which is about another £8000 a year. This is a total of not less than £20.000 added to the existing petrol taxes. If it goes on as it is, motor transport, either commercial or private, will become an expensive luxury in the Dominion. The public should "be educated to this outrageous system of taxation. I again suggest that all petrol resellers should exhibit a sign quoting petrol 1/ and tax 1/ per gallon. The tobacconists should notify all who buv local cigarettes that they pay him 4:1 per packet of 10 and the Government 2(1. On imported lines, 3d for the cigarettes and 3d tax* Ihcsc are but two of manv examples. CITIZEN. *

CHILD LABOUR,

Your correspondent E. Gibson assures me that the poverty is still tlwre ■ in "Merrie England," and advises me to ■ read several books. Well, as I am a busy dairy farmer's wife, I haven't time to sit down rending books, but as I was bnrn and was educated in "Industrial England'' I should know something about it. True, there may be a certain amount of poverty, for it would be a very Utopian State where poverty was absolutely eliminated, but she assured "Citizen" he would not find these conditions In New Zealand. I would like to tell her there is plenty of povarty and child labour in New Zealand. New Zealand's income would be reduced by thousands of pounds if all the children under fifteen years of age and all married women were forbidden to work in milking sheds. What a pity a Robert Owen does not arise and start a crusade on behalf of these unfortunate little ones in New Zealand. Your correspondent presumes that I read of the hunger march in England of two years a go- Yes. I did read the account of it. and I also read of the riots in Auckland a few years ago and saw some of the damage done. I seen women and children herded together in camps in New Zealand. Personally I have never seen these conditions in "Industrial England"—the houses in Lancashire and Yorkshire are substantial, well-built and cheap—but I will take J. H. Priestley's •word for it. What a book one could write of "Rural New Zealand"/ if only one had the time and the literary gifts of J. H. Priestley, of women in the milking sheds one day and in the maternity homes the next; of little children reared in boxes in the milking sheds sucking milk from a bottle because their mothers have no time to eft down and nurse them; of fish and fruit kept at such a high price that only the comparatively rich can partake of these valuable foods in sufficient quantities, and of hospitals full of goitrous and inadequately nourished people. LANCASHIRE LASS.

CHILDREN AND PENSIONS.

What encouragement do women get to bring children into this world? My position is this: I have been separated from my husband for one year. I have a baby five months old. My husband, knowing that if he works he must keep me, remains on sustenance. Which means he receives £1 per week to keep himself. I receive 15/ for mvself and the generous (!) sum of 4/ per week to feed and clothe my child. Why is it, that we women, who are expected to populate 2*>ew Zealand, should be treated in this manner? It is not my fault that my husband will not go to work. But the baby and I are expected to suffer for his laziness. If Mr. Savage thinks that 1!)/ per week is enough to support any woman and child lie is very much mistaken. It is cruel. If you wish to place a child in a State home you must pay 15/ a week for that child's keep. Why, then, are we expected to support them on 4/ per week? I have never heard of anything so ridiculous as this. It takes £1 per week to support one person, and two others are expected to exist on 10/. It is not'possible. Why are we not allowed 15/ per week for a child, the same as a State home demands? Any woman with any mother love is not going to see her own flesh and blood starve. DISAPPOINTED YOUNG MOTHER.

OUR DEMOCRACY.

We in New Zealand have the right to ' elect our Parliament. That is, once in : three or more years we vote for a member. These members make us wonderful promises, which I am convinced | they have no intention of carrying out, and which, in a great many case?, they j know to lie impossible. The Labour j Government promised to remove the sales tax, lower the exchange rate, pre- I vent the cost of living rising, etc., and you may judge the result. Of all their | blundering the worst was preventing i the importation of wheat, and forcing us to eat bre-nd made of poor wheat. It | must be remembered tliey were elected by a people driven to desperation by the j ineptitude of the last Government. Well.' again the election approaches, and we j hear great cries of freedom from the \ Nationals. Well, if you really want freedom why elect a Parliament to make laws restricting it. I am of the opinion that the people who are not satisfied with either party (probably the majority) are practically disfranchised, as there seems to be no alternative. No wonder dictators arise. MUGGINS.

OUR FALLING BIRTHRATE.

Much has been written of late on this subject, so vitally important to our young country, but one reason for present-day families, being so small has not, I think, been stressed, and that is the great cost of the birth of every baby. At is not that people do not wish to have several children—one child is as great a tie as a number. Though at the present coet of living one might well quail at the thought of the food, trousers, boots P.ud school books live or six hearty bovs would need, there is still a general belief ill the old saying, "Every child comes into the world with a loaf under its arm." No, it is the terrible initial cost. How can a young couple on. a salary of £4 or £;> a week, who have in their first year of marriage had to find £•50 for a baby, contemplate several more, at the natural interval of 18 months to two years, if they can prevent it? Now, this used not to be, and I cannot believe that it should be so to-day. Fashion and custom alone make a birth so disastrously expensive. Today a birth is treated more like a surgical operation than a natural process. I know that to quote the "old days" is to court ridicule and condemnation, but this is a most serious subject, and one must speak fearlessly. Our grandparents and our parents and their contemporaries, rich or poor, nearly all had families of from 6 to 10 children. A childless marriage or a very small family was. a great exception. More than that, very few mothers died in childbirth—as witness the large families—and verv few children died, even in infancy. On the contrary, most of those mothers lived to bo over 60 years of age, and most of the children grew up to have large families of their own. This is no generalisation. I speak of what I know to be the fact. Yet in those bad old days what did mothers—even the richestknow of expensive childbirth in nursing homes? Why, it is only in the last 30 years, during which time the birthrate lias been declining, that there "were any of these expensive establishments; they have to be expensive, because their outfitting and upkeep is great. A nurse was engaged for a fortnight, a doctor attended the confinement, and the whole business seldom cost more than £10 to £15. Queen Victoria herself had an experienced but not a very highly trained nurse. She had two doctors, because she was a queen, and not because two were necessary, and only at the birth of her ninth and last baby had she the alleviation of chloroform, now happily available for most women. No, babies should not cost so much, and the pity is they do s-> only because it has become the fashion. GRANDMOTHER.

SOLDIERS' PENSIONS.

New Zealand returned soldiers, only fit for work and suffering from war disabilities and struggling to exist on sustenance and a huge war disability pension of 10/ a week for 12 months, such as my husband has with three years and a half war service, have been left out by I our humane Government! To begin with, where is light work for our war shattered men to be got. My husband was ordered out of a relief drainage job by a doctor to be given light work, and was sent to a heavy road job, wheeling rock and stone, and pick and shovel work, even though he presented a doctor's certificate. He soon collapsed. We lived in a tent on wet ground in a sunless bush gully. We were forced to come to Auckland to get sustenance. He lias been repeatedly turned down for a war veteran's pension by the War Pensions Board, and even refused medical attention by the Pension* Department, after proving him to be suffering from war disability. He is nearly 55, and like other soldiers' wives, I live in constant fear of sustenance petering out. Does Mr. Savage not realise that sooner or later we women, as well as our husbands, will be hospital cases from worry. Many returned soldiers draw big pensions, and many don't. Why increase war veterans' pensions and neglect those on small pensions. We are British subjects, so why not British to these neglected, forgotten men, vSn| ' fought in all the horrors of the fKcsß war. They have honestly earned ajfeQM sion, not sustenance, an insult returned men. TWELVE I

THE HALF-TIMER.

In the admirably written autobiography of Sir Harry Lauder, he tells of being a half-timer at school. I was unaware, until reading the book, that half-time meant attendance upon alternate days. Is the system of half-time at school the same in England or is there any such practice there at all? Perhaps you or some reader can given me the information.

ALEXANDER FRASER