BOOTS AND BLANKETS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 7, 8 July 1935, Page 11

BOOTS AND BLANKETS

DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

RETAILERS PROTEST

ARE PAWNSHOPS OVER-

STOCKED ?

Government distribution of boots and blankets to the needy through the Labour Department, postmasters, and other State employees is caustically criticised by the New Zealand Draper. Clothier, and Boot Retailers1 Federation, as representing the protest of retail traders against what it describes as "reckless distribution."

The retail trade, it is explained, protested to the Government last winter against assuming the function of boot distributors. An offer to do this work for a nominal Charge of 10 per cent, was declined by the Government, although the average overhead cost of running a retail establishment is 25 per cent., it is explained.

The official journal asserts that "the Government continues its haphazard and bureaucratic idea, regardless of its suitability or wisdom, with the result that recently social workers have reported that pawnshops and secondhand dealers are overstocked with supplies of the workers' boots, distributed by the State to the unemployed regardless of their real need."

Before criticising "the improvidence and ingratitude of the unemployed in so disposing of the gracious gift of our paternal politicians," it should be borne in mind, the journal states, "that in the first instance the relief worker had to work an extra day to earn the boot issue, and the footwear became their absolute property which they could dispose of as they chose, and in many cases the unemployed may have sold their State boots in order to provide footwear or other goods more urgently needed by their dependants."

The federation further states that "the distribution of boots proceeds apace, and they are served out to the jobless by State officials in the same mechanical manner, whether the unemployed need them or not, and the recipients are not likely to refuse them when they can be readily sold, pledged, or bartered for something they need much more. It would have been much more practical and sensible to have issued orders to the same value, and allow the unemployed workers and their wives to have filled their urgent requirements through the usual trade channels, with but a nominal charge for the service." FREE BLANKETS IN PAWN. Bitter complaint is also made of the free distribution of blankets "in the same unchecked fashion, and quite regardless of the urgent necessities of those in distressful circumstances who may be already, provided with rugs and blankets, but are in desperate need of other essentials which could be provided at the same expenditure from the public funds. No worker, of course, will turn down the offer of a free pair of good double blankets from our local mills; but our social workers, with practical experience'in the cheerless task of ameliorating the misery of enforced idleness and poverty, will be in no way surprised to find the State issue of blankets looming large, in the stocks of our pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers just as'boots have done; and for this the blame must be laid more at the doors of those responsible for this reckless distribution than : those luckless ones who have found by bitter, experience that man cannot live; by boots and blankets alone. NO LACK OF SYMPATHY. "It must not be thought that our trade is in the least hostile to attempts by the State, local bodies, or voluntary organisations to do all in their power to alleviate as far as is humanly possible the suffering and misery which prolonged unemployment has brought to thousands of families. "No one knows better than those engaged in the noble and humanitarian task of relieving these victims of economic distress the generous manner in which our members have always responded to appeals for assistance in their work,"i explains the trade journal. .'.•'■■ "This response is not advertised or converted into political capital, and no section of the community is more anxious to see unemployment and its attendant evils wiped out than our retailers, if only on the hedonistic grounds of restoring depressed business to normal conditions. ' But we do object to the waste and diversion of public funds' to hare-brained and mechanistic distribution of goods regardless of actual needs. The supply of groceries, bread, milk,, fuel, and other necessities for those in need is made through the usual trade channels, and such method is undoubtedly more efficient and economical than the handling of these supplies by inexperienced State officials. We resent the implication that our drapers and boot stores are not capable of rendering equally useful service in their sphere of trade."