SUSTENANCE PAY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22111, 5 June 1937, Page 20

SUSTENANCE PAY

TO rust EDITOR OF THE PRESS Sir—This irf just a line in support of ’’Quidnunc’s" letter in “The Press” of Wednesday. I should like him to know that I am just such another as he referred to in his letter. 1 left. Southland with the intention of harvesting, but found too many aheadv here for the little there was. I registered at the Unemployment Office and have been told that X cannot draw relief. In short. I just have to starve. There are dozens like me. Even to gel a farm job vou have not to be more than 36 or 17. It "is strange, even ironical, that the very country that is starving me will, in the event of war, expect me to go and defend it It will oven probably give me 5s a dav to go and do it. Why can it not give me that now to keep my body and soul together? Is that not of more importance than going on to the battlefield and killing rny fellow-creatures? Why lock the stable door when the horse has bolted? One wonders at the amount of vice, bag-snatching, pclly pilfering, even birth declines and socalled abortionists (hat are rife these days. Does one have to go far to wonder? Surely there is no evil that one would hesitate ,-it when it comes to getting something to oat. These are my thoughts on the subject, and the sooner the “heads” in the Unemployment Office, or even the Government itself. realise this, the sooner will the whole of the community benefit.—Yours, etc., UNFAIR, June 4, 1937.