The Evening Star TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1932. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Evening Star, Issue 20998, 12 January 1932, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1932. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

The Hospital Board is doing something to relieve the most urgent necessities of the unemployed. Its first offer was to find £IOO to provide food for those who are unable to get it in sufficient quantity out of the scanty proceeds of relief work. It is an easy calculation how far £100—2,000 shillings—will go to meet the needs of the 2,000 men, women, and children who, by a moderate estimate, have been said to be in need of help beyond that which the Government supplies. But tho board is doing more. Impressed, as a result of last week’s happenings, with a new sense of the gravity of present conditions for their most helpless victims, it has opened itself an emergency relief depot to assist relief workers in their “ stand-down ” week. That might mean much or little, according to the principles on which it was conducted. If the main considerations in the board’s mind had been that it was making its new departure virtually under compulsion, against its settled conviction that the responsibility for dealing with unemployment should rest with the Tin-

employment Board, and if assistance was to be doled out or refused, in accordance with its officials’ estimate of the circumstances of each particular case, with a chief object of husbanding expenditure, not many might be benefited, and those not much. But the board is not following that method. Every applicant is made eligible for the aid by the mere fact of his being a relief worker suffering his “ standdown ” week, the relief itself being graded, in fixed amounts, according to the number of dependents. That promises to afford very real succour, and may dispense with the need for reviving at this stage the pound-a-week scheme for relief which wo mentioned yesterday. At the same time help from the public for the new depot is being sought, and will be cordially welcomed. The new course leaves still Jess requirement for the “ Citizens’ Relief Committee,” which it was suggested might be largely controlled by representatives of the unemployed themselves, in whose qualities for management the public might very easily feel less confidence than they did in the old committee. The departure of the Hospital Board, however, makes a purely temporary expedient. It is only being pursued until a definite understanding can bo reached by personal interview with members of the Government as to who is to be responsible for unemployment relief. The Hospital Board still believes that the full responsibility in that respect should rest with the Government, and that seems to us the proper principle. If more taxation should bo needed to make relief reasonable, that must be borne with; the burden will be no lighter if it is incurred by the Hospital Board, to be met by rates. The Central Mission has also opened a depot this morning to deal with cases which would not bo eligible for the board’s assistance, and the good work of this organisation, as well as others, during a trying time must be cordially appreciated by the citizens.