THE DOLE WAR

Hokitika Guardian, 3 December 1932, Page 6

THE DOLE WAR

TROUBLE TN .NEW SOUTH WALES. SYDNEY, November 10. Though the trouble oyer the dole application forms has died down Ux moot of the - centres of population it is still acute in some of the mining areas, notably at Portland land Lithgow. It lhas been shown repeatedly that the questionnaire wh'ch has beep, so vehemently criticised, and which has been styled -■humiliating” and “degrading” by Langites and Communists alike, i s not nearly so personal and intimate in character as several of the forma of questions adopted by the Lang Administration. A correspondent has just pointed out, in the “World,” that endowment claims and claims under the Child Welfare Act, which have to be made 'by women,’ include long lists of questions regarding the legitimacy of parentage of children, and the legal or illicit relations of their parents, to which there is no kind of parallel in the dole questionnaire. The only possible inference fc that, as Mr Bruxner and' Mr Dunningham (Minister ot Labour) have said, the appl'caton forms are simply being exploited “‘°r political and antisocial purposes’ ; and the Government refuses to take uny notice of those who have deliberately get themselves to stir up trouble on Communist and revolutionary Pnes. Mr Hawkins, who is in charge of the dole arrangements, has shown that restrictions on the distribution of dole were necessary because about £1,000,000 a year was being paid to people not entitled to relief under the Laneite regime. But the malcontents in this case" d 0 not desire to listen to reason. SHOPKEEPERS AT LITHGOW.

The trouble for the moment is concentrated chiefly at Lithgow. There the shopkeepers are .still holding out against the new Government 'scale and the unemployed are refusing to accept the dole, partly because they object to the questionnaire, partly because the storerefusing to sell at the Government price, have in effect cut down Hie rations. This evil alliance has brought the unemployed in this unfor-. innate town to the verge of starvation. Tndeed, if the townspeople had not established soup kitchens and distributed food gratis during the past week, the wives and children of the unemployed Would have been literally without* the means 0 f sustaining life. Of course, the 'Langites blame the Government for all these needless sufferings and bmp execrations upon Mr Stevens and his “callous minions.” But it is not difficult -tp prove that the • fault dees not He with the Government or its officials. In the first place, as' regards the price of food at Lithgow, the Chief Secretary (Mr Chaffey) ha s shown that storekeepers appear to have been guilty of exploitation. The Government scale fixes the .pripe of rations for a single person on A scale at 5s 9£d; though at Dubbo, Nyngan and Gundagai—centres in something like th e same relative position as Lithgow in regard to transport charges—the cost of food on thyt scale ranges from 5s S£d to 5s 6fd per head. But the storekeepers it Litheow have been charging 6s 7d to 6s 8d per head, and they declare •that they cannot sell the food for less. Yet tliere is positive proof that the cost of rations at many other places fa r more remote from Sydney and other main centres of supply is lower than at Lithgow. LEADERS 'SEND IN THEIR FORMS.

Now as to the trouble over the questionnaire. It is easy to show that those who have been foremost in urging the unemployed to refuse the dole and burn the forms have themselves accepted secretly this tance.” During the week the Minister for (Labour told the Legislative Assembly that ‘Oll the metropolitan areas and on the coalfields, all the leaders of the demonstrations against the doles sent in their own forms,” ..or, as he ,put it more explicitly, those who had advised t.he burning of the dole forms had first .sent in their own application for relief. This charge has not been denied; but lest the evidence of Mr Dunningham may be regarded as biased, I will m cite a witness of entirely different type and character. At a great meeting of unionists held at ttho Trades Hall last Sunday, in 'which the Langite.s gained a decisive victory over the Communists, Air Jock Garden, who is now—for r ea son s be-t known to himself—denouncing the ■CommUntytis as traitors to Labour's cause, warned his hearers that the unemployed were being betrayed one-e more by those who were urging them t 0 burn the dole papers and gave the names of s e ven leaders of the United Front (a Communist organisation which ho now wishes to keep outside the Labour l’arty) who in several of the metropolitan areas had made th e mselves conspicuous by haranguing the unemployed and urging them to destroy the questionnaire forms ; but they had taken the precaution of applying themselves beforehand for food relief. “They did not care,” said Mr Garden, “what might become of the starving women and children, but they made fcure -that they would be fed themselves.”