THE HELPING HAND.

Evening Star, Issue 21093, 4 May 1932, Page 8

THE HELPING HAND.

Every minister, we take it, knows what unemployment means in his own charge or parish, and does his best, assisted by church organisations, to relieve it. Most of them know much less about the general problem and the system which deals with it. That conclusion certainly is suggested by yesterday’s discussion of the Dunedin Presbytery, which showed its members as keenly concerned to extend tbeir helpfulness beyond immediate boundaries and very much perplexed as to how to do it. The Presbytery, we think, will not get much further forward by telling the Government how much more it should do. The Government is spending at present three and a-half millions a year on unemployment, much of which comes out of the pockets of those who are not very much better off than the unemployed, and may bo unemployed to-morrow. The relief given will be, on the whole, quite appreciably enlarged by the abolition of the “ stand-down ” week, and no heed need be taken of the very small minority of trouble-makers, for whom that benefit is outweighed by the fact that, while none of them can work more than four days a week, they will work longer lor each pound that they receive. The “ stand-down ” rule, unfortunately, has not ended yet for this district, but it will end next week. When the question was asked, at the meeting of the Presbytery, where the money was to come, from for the Government to do more than it is doing there was no reply. In those circumstances, and as a committee has yet to report what adequate relief which may be considered practicable should be, the motion to throw tlm whole burden of “ adequate ” relief upon the Government’s shoulders, with the elimination of depots and dockets, might have omitted.

We can make a better suggestion to the churches than any that was discussed at this meeting of the Presbytery. Let them, for the most part, work within their parish boundaries, and leave the wider quest tion of the Government’s and the depots’ administration, which it is obvious they have still to study, alone. Let them take up the system which Miss M. Richmond, encouraged by His Excellency the Governor-General, is organising in Wellington, which provides for non-professional women in comfortable circumstances making friends on equal terms with families not in* comfortable circumstances for the mutual happiness and welfare of both parties.” The scheme can be expanded. We see no reason why it should be confined to “ non-profes-sional ” women or to women at all. Place it on a basis of families, and it resolves itself at once into the “ family adoption ” scheme which we have never ceased to i.rge. No one can organise that system so well as the churches. They know more, probably, than anyone else of distressed families within their own boundaries, and information that is lacking to them could very soon be gained from centralised social workers and from the depots. Where it was a case of this or the other denomination helping families of none, a joint committee of the churches might prevent overlapping. It is probably true that “ people of independence and pride do not go to the depots. or suffer too much before they accept their help. Under this plan those people would be assisted, and as the scheme extended need for recourse to the depots, which are held to be “ breaking down the spirit and pride of the people.” would be steadily reduced. The churches can do more in this way than by calling on the Government to do this and that and the other which already it is doing, to the best of its ability, or by reinvestigating, rather than investigating, camps for single men, of which there aro only two in this district; almost immediately to be closed. The single men in camps have not had the worst of this burden. Mr Coates’s scheme for settling families in the country, with financial assistance till they can find their feet, involves the best means which has yet been suggested for helping a proportion of the unemployed, but it can only work slowly. What is most needed in the meantime is fellowship and friendship, and to say that is not to disparage depot workers, who have worked heroically.