UNEMPLOYED RELIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19838, 7 January 1928, Page 10

UNEMPLOYED RELIEF.

POSITION IN CHRISTCHURCH. APPEAL TO GOVERNMENT. [by TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORBESPONBiBNT.J CHRISTCHURCH. Friday. About 100 unemployed attended at' the City Council Chambers to-day to meet the deputy-mayor, Mr. D. G. Sullivan, M.P., with a request that the council should undertake extra work for their relief;.

Mr. D. Turnbull said 950 men were out of work in Christchurch and they asked that .the City Council should do something. There would be 2000 men idle during the winter. Two hundred and fifty men were registered at the unemployment bureau, but those were not all. The North Canterbury Hospital Board did not give the men any fuel and some of them had no clothes to their backs. The men had had a week's work before Christmas, but £4 4s 4d was not enough to keep a wife and family. Mr. »jT. Pearson said the problem was a national one, but at present the City Council was the only body that could give them some work. He estimated there were 632 men out of work. When Mr. Sullivan asked the men who lived in Christchurch to stand up almost every man did so. The response was the same when he asked for the married men to stand.

Mr. Sullivan said he had sent a long telegram to the Prime Minister yesterday urging him to meet the position and Mr. Coates had replied: "I am having inquiries made immediately." The Hon. IL 8. Williams. Mia-ster of Public WorkSj who was at Rotorua, had replied to a similar message: " I am telegraphing to Wellington instructing the department to see what it can do to help the position immediately." Mr. Sullivan said he did not think there was, much hope in the outlook, but he had asked the Government whether, in view of the great efforts by the City Council, it would depart from its precedent and give the council straight-out help to enable it to carry out work at the Bottle Lake reserve. Unless the Government acted the position would be very bad indeed. The City Council nad 170 men in excess of its ordinary staff and it had done a great deaL All the loan money would be exceeded within the next two or three months. There woald not be a penny left in any "loan account that could be used for the unemployed. The Government should face the position and be prepared to meet it. Mr. Pearson: No nine bob a day stunt.