LOOKING FOR WORK.

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 June 1922, Page 7

LOOKING FOR WORK.

■ TRYING EXPERIENCES. “One of the most touching things I saw,’’ s aid Mr W. K. Howitt, who has just returned to Auckland from a trip to Rotorua and other places, “was one bitter cold frosty night in Rotorua two weeks ago. Four decentlooking men who were making for the East Coast, after trying to get work in the country districts along the Main Trunk, line, reached the town late at night, footsore and weary, with not a shilling in their pockets. They tried to seek out as cosy a place as they could in the Domain, and, gathering a few cement bags which they found lying about, they covered themselves as best they could, and/ huddling together, they tried to make themselves a s cosy as possible. At 4.30 a.m. they were discovered by the caretaker of the grounds, who took them out of their nest in the bushes and gave them something Tibt to cheer they up. They wore provided with' breakfast, and proceeded on their way to the place where it was said work could be got. “We are not loafers,” they said. “We want work, and wo do not go and sneak into sheds ; we are independent men, despite our po-

verty, and are willing to sleep out in the open and trouble no one, never mind how frosty it is, so long as the rain keeps off.” At another place an athletic fellow, who had left a good job to try his luck as an athlete against the Springboks, and who won his race, found on his return that he could not get his old job again, as times were too bad and his old boss could not afford to pay him. He travelled a long way before he got work, and then he had to content himself with getting a job cutting blackberry at 25/- per week and found. He said he was not going to complain, and would stick to it a s long as it lasted. The same time the previous year He was making £3 per week. Scores of men were looking for work in the country, and not many of them were wasters, and they liked their chance? in the country better than hanging, about the cities, where the endless traffic got on their nerves and where it was hard to live.”