WORK FOR SINGLE MEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20594, 19 June 1930, Page 14

WORK FOR SINGLE MEN.

Sir,—The single man wants no sympathy from the immigrant. New Zealanders ore energetic and independent, but don't forget there are townies who have worked in the country and made country conditions better. No doubt those wages may suit the learneis, or apprentices, but those who have ..served a term of six years and six and a-half years' night school to better themselves, 'at small 'wages, to learn a trade and be fully qualified, cannot turn round and do cowspanking. If they did perhaps your \vac»s would bo lower, and a few cowspankers in the doss house. lam a young tradesman, 22 years, of age, and lu% qualified. UNEMPLOYED.

Sir,—While agreeing with "Cowspanker" that keeping single men on a dolo and in doss houses is not conducive to breeding a race cf independent men, we are inclined to disagree with him when he says work is plentiful up country. My mate and I, like Cowspankoj. work for our tucker. We toured the country on push-bikes, but always were. met with tho inevitable answer, Nothing doing. Wo offered to go singly or as mates, regardless of remuneration, yet could net get placed. Consequently wr- came back, dispirited and "fed up" with conditions in general. We have had extensive farming experience in Australia, Canada and England, and while in Denmark saw the Daneu at farm work. Yet withal with these qualifications we cannot get work on a farm, perhaps because we have had little or no colonial practical farm work. Unless our native country can provide us with the necessities for getting food to keep us alive, wo shall and will go where we can get a Fair Deal.

Sir, —It is pleasant to read of such a desirable young "Vecent arrival as "Cow-, spanker," and one may heartily wish him all the luck possible; He states that he is still in his teens, so it may be presumed that he has still a lot to learn. Among the unemployed are stalwart bushmen, timber workers, skilled tradesmen, who have been earning £5 per _week; does our young friend expect them to start lifts over again at 12s 6d per week and found? It may interest him to learn that it was but yesterday morning the writer was informed that* nine inmates of the doss house, possessing but a small brown paper parcel between them, had taken to the road in search of work. The recent Reform Prime Minister stated that thpre were 33,000 miles of road requiring permanent formation and 4,000,000 acres of virgin land awaiting cultivation, so your correspondent is correct in stating there is plenty of work about, but our stupid politicians have 1000 idle men about tho streets in the good weather when they might earn sufficient to enable thern to avoid such places- as the doss house and send them to the country in the winter to endeavour to make roads out of slush. Then they complain about not getting value for the expenditure on relief works. What between footpaths, roads and vacant sections overgrown with weeds arid grass, decaying fences, gardens in need of a decent clean up, houses crying aloud for a coat of paint, there is enough work in Auckland city and suburbs for a thousand men. but it cannot be had< Why? ' N.Z.