WORK WANTED, NOT CHARITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 4 February 1928, Page 11

WORK WANTED, NOT CHARITY

(To the Editor) Sir, —Permit me to acid a few words to the item in “Ihe Mail” of 2nd February, detailing the Rev. Jasper Caldeir’s statements on unemployment in Auckland. City missioners iike the Rev. T. Calder of Auckland, the Rev. Fielden Taylor of Wellington, and the Rev. Bryan King of Dunedin, “know their business”—the business of knowing much of the economic pressure of unemployment on the people. Ask any of these three and they would likely echo the Rev. Mr Calder’s Words, “'They do not want charity. They want work.” Also, 2000 men “out of work” in Auckland means, at a low estimate, probably 6000 women and children suffering. It also means a large number of women wanting work and unable to get it. Few people, I think, realise how much V'omen need work. Sympathies always seem to rush out to unemployed men, but what about the unemployed women of this land? There is an American phrase I am fond of, though it is slang: “Let us come down to tin-tacks.” Here is a tin-tack I acquired some months ago: A secretary of a big industrial concern of New Zealand (not a Nelson one) wrote me that if of the £3,000,000 sent abroad for goods, £1,000,000 of this was spent (os it might be) in purchasing the same goods of New Zealand make, factories would be “booming” and going at top, and industry generally would be so stimulated that unemployment would vanish out of the land, and there would be, as in America, “two jobs for every man and woman” in New Zealand. Also, that it is the women of New Zealand who can bring this about, by giving up the purchase of overseas goods, and (though he did not- add this!) by giving up their incessant, craving for “bargains.” We have, it is true, no “sweated industries” here, but we support those of Germany! This is a very serious subject, worthy of a far abler pen than mine. T profess no business knowledge or ability, but I know much of haybup women’s needs, and I endorse every word that secretary wrote me. There was a time —about 1919—when labour was scarce. About that year I was employed by an association of certain industries. to “write up” the employment they had to offer to women and children. Scarcity of labour may come to pass again, but. it will not be remedied by the exigencies of any revolution, whether of social or of civil war. We women have it largely in our own hands to lessen the lack of work for the men and women "who want work; not charitv.” It is up to us to do this. — I am, etc., GRACE FOX. Wakapuaka, 3rd Feb.