BACK TO REAL JOBS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22461, 3 July 1936, Page 15

BACK TO REAL JOBS

Sir, —I wish to congratulate and endorse "Gratitude" in your issue of .lune 30. The Labour Government has a wonderful opportunity, against a negligible Opposition, to carry out its main pledges, namely, the relief of distress, and tin; abolition of poverty and unemployment. Do they know where to begin absorbing labour? That is the question. It does not matter two pins raising wages to J6s per day on public undertakings, if only a mere couple of hunderd men are to participate in the bounty Far better to maintain everyone, even on relief camp rates, at something showing returnable and economic value, that is, until the recovery of this country is a little more manifest, than to embark, as they have done, on a wholesale closure of county council camps, just as winter was coming on, too, without making other provision for the men concerned. The raising of sustenance rates was merely a right step in the wrong direction. It is taking a long time for our Government to decide what is to constitute this tremendous programme of work they are everlastingly talking about, but, as "Gratitude" says, talk is cheap. Kaimanawa.