UTILISING BELIEFS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 40, 17 February 1933, Page 6

UTILISING BELIEFS

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I see by the Press the Mayor has invited the surrounding, local bodies to meet and discuss the'question of utilising the relief workers to advantage. May I suggest that each local "body go into the matter of seeing how many men can be put to work at a living wage equal to the amount allocated to. be spent on the works under consideration, and those who are not able to be placed, handed over to the Government for placing on essential works at a living wage, failing which sustenance to be paid by the board. There are many good men, tradesmen, and others on relief works at present who are willing and. anxious to give of their best in return for. a, living wage, but by the present system are gradually becoming pick and shovel;men, with little uo'pe"of anything better.. The position seems to be that so long as local bodies arid charitable institutions are prepared to shoulder the responsibility - they imajr do. so while the Unemployment Board sits' still. The sooner our : generals, of industry and politics realise that' by /getting as many'men as possible on- to a living wage the sooner we are going, to piill; this; country out of this mire. ■ -Business"men. -must ' be awake to the fact, that unless they stand side by side with the man'on relief and battle for .him to 'get work and enough" to live on they" themselves must close up- their businesses, and in time join the everincreasing mass of unemployed. The cry should be, "Employ every ma-i possible at a living wage,'' that he may spend and increase business that others in iue course could be given work; the rei ainder be made a direct charge to the G jvernment, not local /bodies and charities. I venture to Kay twelve months of following this idea would more than halve the number of relief -workers.—l am, etc..

ADVANCE.