A SCANDAL EXPOSED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19960, 31 May 1928, Page 10

A SCANDAL EXPOSED.

A very scandalous state. of affairs was revealed in the Police Court yesterday when the activities of the Auckland Unemployed Association wefe under notice. This association originated in an open-air meeting in the city, and was given permission by the City Council to take up a street collection on one day only. This realised about £350. Since then, the association has continued its operations, not on the streets, but by a door-to-door begging expedition, and has in this way collected, according to the admission of its chief promoter, over illooo. No proper books of account have been kept, and no audit has been held, so that there is no assurance that this statement covers the actual takings. The collectors have been given a portion, usually half, of what they presumably collected: even in this arrangement there has been no guarantee of honesty. After the salaried manager-secretary and the collectors have had what they regarded as a fair share of tho takings, the remainder has been disbursed—ostensibly to deserving unemployed, but by so shockingly loose a method that the money may have gone anywhere else, so far as the books of the association show. This state of things very properly received condemnation from the Bench. A little group of men, really responsible to no one but themselves, has been handling a considerable amount of money collected from confiding people, and thero is no adequate proof that it has gone where its donors intended it should go. This way of doing things may or may not have been a wicked exploiting of a situation of prevalent distress; but thei e can be only one thought about it now that publicity is given to it—it must either be put on an absolutely trustworthy footing or be summarily stopped. Such scandalous proceedings put under cruel suspicion all reasonable efforts to enlist charitable sympathy in the relief of unemployment, and do the genuine unemployed a very damaging disservice. Those who have been engaged in such proceedings should be debarred from any sort of participation in future efforts to administer unemployment relief.