UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21668, 11 June 1932, Page 14

UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I have thought much during the last few months of the sad lot of unemployed women and men not strong enough to benefit by the unemployment schemes. The Government has done nothing for women, and very little,for lads under 20, though both have to pay the unemployment levy. I admit it is not easy to provide employment on a large scale for yomen, but if the Government had the sufferings of women at heart, it would long ere this have established factories for, say, basketmaking and toymaking, provided work rooms where the clothes of unemployed men would be mended, and have subsidised farmers’ wives to board women in exchange for household help, and thus tide them over the winter. We urgently need women in Parliament to voice the claims of women and all the weak, and I hope to see a number returned at the next general election, which —prudently—the Government has deferred for a year beyond the constitutional date.

My object, however, is not to blame the Government, but to suggest various kinds of work which would give pleasant and fairly remunerative work to thousands of men and women all over the Dominion. — I am, etc., Edith Hodgkinson. ■ North-East Valley, June 10.

[We are unable to provide space for the suggestions put forward by our correspondent. They include the making of shell flowers, the making of ornaments from shells, the making of picture frames, trinkets, doll’s furniture and pot plants with the use of shells, the making of toys and dolls, the making of albums for postcards and stamps, etc., with directions as to how the work should be done.— Ed. O.D.T.]