APPEAL FOR HELP

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 1, 1 July 1922, Page 8

APPEAL FOR HELP

600 MEN OUT OF WORK.

.' The following letter was sent to the Mayor on Thursday evening last by Mr. G. Mitchell, M.P., honorawy secretary of the Central Progress League:— "Dear Sir, —I again wish to bring the qiiestion of the unemployed before your council. As you are aware, the position shows no improvement. In fact, it appears much more acute, and demands prompt action where we now have procrastination and delay. There are about 679 names on your register, and between 360 to 380 at the Labour Bureau; Allowing for the whole, of the former to be also registered at yonr bureau, there are over 600 awaiting work on these two registers. Fifty married soldiers are now at work at the Prince of Wales Park, and we trust some more will be put on as/soon as you are ready for them. This still leaves 70 or 80 soldiers at least to be provided for. Besides these, numbera are calling here—l expect you have the same experience— who are not registered at all. At the present time one has no option but, to send some of these people along for charity, which is passed on to the public. They ask for work, which it is our united duty to provide for them in times such as these. In view of the amount of loan money which has been so liberally subscribed, the general feeling is that this money should be used now to employ these men to carry out the -works on the loan schedule for which the money was raised. After providing for as many as possible by this means, we will then know what farther steps are necessary to provide for the balance.

"You will remember that at the last unemployment meeting held in your room, your report from the engineer was that the new Khandallah-road formation would be ready .to start men on in ten days. It is now over that time. I appeal to yon to expedite those works on the loan schedule which can be gone on with, and to call the citizens' committee together again so that we may take some steps to provide for other urgent cases. People will forgive us for making misT takes in trying to do right, but we deserve their censure if we fail to act in the interest of thoee less fortunate than ourselves. This letter was placed before a committee meeting of the Returned Soldiers' Association, who support it entirely.—Yours faithfully, <5. Mitchell."