Unemployment Relief

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 98, 9 April 1934, Page 8

Unemployment Relief

(To the Editor). Sir, —Please allow me space to make a few remarks re your footnote to Mr. Kelly’s letter. 1 ’ve been on relief for one year and two months and have tried to live during that time on 15/weckly. Having no children under 16 now I’m allowed li days. Out of this 15/- 1 pay 13/- for rent (anyone doubting this can examine my rent book in the council office). During this time I’ve earned a few shillings canvassing for a local man, but not being an expert at persuading people to buy things they don’t want I’ve lately had to give this up. Then I took to canvassing for garden work (being an experienced gardener). This also I’ve given up in sheer despair. Now, Mr. Editor, be a sport. If these conditions are not all Mr. Kelly described, then I am forced to this conclusion that the truth is not in you. When 1 see my wife walking up the street in shoes that have long since passed their prime my Scotch blood rises in rebellion. I’ve talked with men in employment who have intimated their willingness to bear further taxation if necessary if they caa be assured that the money is used for this purpose. I can give you evidence of eases where a man and his wife have been compelled to break up their bouse and put their children in a home where they get three square meals a day, the husband going to a camp at Taupo and the wife, owing to poor health, to a family to work for her food. If, Sir, these conditions arc not rotten, they are to say the least shameful in a country that can show by its banning returns that money is plentiful.—! am, etc., “DOWN AND OUT.” Hastings, April 8, 1934.

[Few will fail to sympathise with “Down and Out” in the misfortune that has fallen upon him, and it ia to help him and those like him through their adversity that everyone, from the apprentice on a few shillings n week to the high-salaried executive, pays a tax of one shilling from every pound earned. In addition there is a great deal of voluntary giving to charitable purposes, all of which helps to alleviate the lot of those who are suffering economic distress. Mr. Kelly 4" speaking of unemployment relief said the “crude barbarities of the past fade into insignificance.’’ The footnote to this letter merely pointed to the absurdity of his remarks. It is not the amount of money in the banks that makes wealth but the amount profitably invested, and the present high taxation has made many businesses unprofitable. Unemployment relief is costing New Zealand £4,000,000 a year and is adding little to the earning capacity of the country. Until more is earned there cannot be more to share round.—Ed. H.B.T.]