HUMANITY’S CAUSE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 252, 21 September 1933, Page 6

HUMANITY’S CAUSE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —The following may be of interest during the present controversy: “The assembling of the unemployed masses in our great cities in multitudinous thousands is a most gruesome spectacle, and their piteous cry for work or broad is being heard all over the land. It is the old unsolved problem of poverty, intensified by the unprecedented depression. Involuntary idleness is a constantly growing evil coincident with civilisation. It is the dark shadow that steadily creeps after civilisation, increasing in dimensions and intensity as civilisation advances. Things are certainly in an abnormal condition, when men are willing to work, and yet cannot find work to do, while their very life depends upon work. There is no truth in the old saw that ‘the world owes every man a living.’ But it is true that the world owes every man a chance to earn his living. Many theories have been advanced and many efforts have been made to secure the inalienable ‘right to work’ to every one willing to work, hut all such attempts have hitherto ended in gloomy failure. He will indeed be a benefactor to mankind who shall successfully solve the problem how to secure to every willing worker some work to do, and thus rid mankind of the curse of involuntary idleness. “The cry for bread goes up from the city. It is deeper, hoarser, broader than it has ever been. It comes from gnawing stomachs and weakened frames. It comes from men who tramp the streets searching for work. Jt comes from women sitting hopeless in bare rooms. It comes from little children. Few persons who will read this can understand what it means to be without food. It is one of those things so frightful that it cannot be brought home to them. There are men so weakened from lack of food that they cannot work if work is offered to them. How is this? We have so much to eat that the farmers are complaining that they can get nothing for it. We have so much to wear that cotton and woollen mills are closing down because there is no one to buy their products, yet these goods are denied to millions of our fellows. Why? We have so many houses that the builders are out of work. When the country has enough food, clothing, fuel, shelter for everybody, why are times so hard? Evidently nature is not to blame. Who or what, then, tlieu, is?” The above appeared in the California Advocate in the year 1893 and may help “Citizen” and “Citizen No 2” to realise why men come forward to fight tlie injustices of to-day. The unemployed’s fight against poverty is everyone’s fight if we are to avoid becoming a nation of paupers. Mr Justice McCarthy, in an article in “Cosmopolis,” declared: “The evils of pauperism and lack of employment ought to strike more terror to the heart of England than any alarm about foreign invasion.” The late Hon. Jos. Chamberlain: “This question of want of employment, already a very serious one, will become one of the greatest possible magnitude, and I see the gravest reasons for anxiety as to the complications which may possibly ensue. I am certain that, grave as are the evils now, we shall have at no distant time to meet much more serious consequences.” Hats off to those who take up the

fight, against existing conditions. They are fighting the greatest battle of the age—down with pauperism, up with humanity.—l am, etc., A. A. YTJLE, 9 Colombo Street, Sept. 21, 1933. e