TOWN OF GRIM HUNGER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13650, 18 January 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

TOWN OF GRIM HUNGER.

STARVATION SCENES IN SUNDER-

LAND.

TflK distress in Sunderland (writes the correspondent of a London . pap?r) _ ha# been unequalled for a generation. Within the limit* of the parliamentary division close on eight thousand men are out of ■work, Many are literally starving, and are going for days without food. . Babies are born in stripped rooms, where the mother's only bed is the floor. There is hunger here, grim, gaimt, and acute. The streets of the borough are thronged all day with groups of idle mechanic* and labourers, rnci with pinched, faces, who lounge along sucking empty pipes. Many shipyards are _cl(feed, and still more make a mere pretence of keeping Open. The workhouse is crammed. Statistics tell something of the extent of the distress. The unemployed in those union* on the Weir hare risen- from 6.1 per cent., a year ago to 22.4 per cent. Nearly 2300 unemployed have . registered their names at the offices of the distress committee, and hundreds more come each day. These are only a parti for most skilled men do not register. The secretary of the distress committee estimates the total out of work at 6000. Among the boitermaker* alone 1500 are idle. For each idle boijermaker three labourers lose work. Nearly 50 per cent, of the nvin in the building trade are out. One firm that paid £3000 a week in wages in June is paying about £300 now. The Co-operative Society at the end of September bad. improved its last year's trading account by £1600, to-day that improvement is turned into a decline of £3000.

A CHANGED PICTURE. ' Sunder! depends most- ■ solely on shipbuilding. The narrow and deep channel of the Wear, ft»ll of shipping, edged with factories, and backed by rising sides covered with smoke-stained houses, usually presents one of the busiest industrial pnetures to be seen in England. Recently I gazed down at the fog-shrouded river valley. Giant chimney after giant chimney stood like a dead thing against the sky, no smoke coming from the chimneys. The galea of many works wero shut.

The one reason for the distress heve is the amazing decline in shipbuilding. This is attributable to many causes, mainly the high price of coal ana steel and over production. Some blame the raising of the Pliinsoll line as a contributory cause.

In the working ekes, suburb of Southwick I met with many heartrending and tragic examples of the acuteness of the misery' and of the heroism with which the people are bearing it. In this district scores and hundreds of children are going to school cither shoeless or with boots that afford no protection from the cold, rain, and snow. Many' hundreds obtain practically no food but the free meals at the schools. At one school alone the head teachers assured me that fully a hundred of their scholars had gone today dinneriesjß, and would remain without bite or sup until to-morrow. WORKING CLASSES HELPING. The working men who are able do everything possible to help. Children whose parents are in work take hungry schoolfellows home to share half their dinner. Mothers search out their spare clothes for neighbours. . The colliers,. at Castletown are sending a weekly trolley of food, the miners' wives clearing their own cupboards to help the hungry mites. " Our great need is boots,", said the head mistress of the High South wick Council school. "Large numbers of children are suffering greatly from lack of these. 1 "The distress is in some cases too terrible to contemplate." This morning, for Instance, I noticed one' girl of seven at breakfast. It was plain that she had had notliirijg. to eat "spiiool broke up on Friday. She was trembling violently, and at first could not take anything. At last we got her to swallow a spoonful or two of cocoa to give her strength to Cat." The local authorities at Sunderland, led by the Mayor, are doing much to meet the distress, but their resources are wholly unequal to the exceptional situation. There is need for active help from the Local Government Board aha from private, charity in othjjr, parts. It ■•Sunderland can tide over between now and January the worst will then probably be ended.