POPPY DAY FUNDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3713, 12 May 1925, Page 66

POPPY DAY FUNDS.

METHOD OF APPLICATION. The use to which the funds derived from the Poppy Day campaign have been put in the past ye'ar or two was the subject of a discussion at the last meeting of the executive of the Dunedin Returned Soldiers’ Association, when the treasurer (Mr M’Hutcheon) reported that the sum of £350 was available from the recent sale of poppies. Mr A. C. Laing said he felt that they had been raising a fund just for town amenities and to provide work for about a dozen men who apparently did not do much work during the year. That was his candid opinion. The same men, he said, came up each time. The money was certainly spent on a useful object, but ho was wondering if there were not a better object to which it could be devoted. Mr J. M'Crae expressed the opinion that those men were probably not fit for ordinary work and could not get it. They might bo genuine triers, and Mr Tannock had always reported favourably on their work. Men who were pot fit for hard manual labour often found difficulty in getting employment, and perhaps that was the reason in this case. Mr Laing said that the men who had come into the office in the past had shown their bona fides as returned soldiers, and married men had been given preference. He had sent to Mr Tannock as many as he could take on, and had told him that if ho thought there were any “swinging the lead” to put them off. Mr M'Cutcheon: Yes, but we i.re getting the most deserving men? Mr M‘Crae : Well that’s a matter that’s very hard to tell. It is not so much for tho man himself that ho is given work as for his wife and family. Mr Laing said that he did not think conditions were going to be very hard this year.

Finally, Mr M'Crae moved that the president and the secretary confer with Mr Tannock regarding the work that was being done, and that they should make any suggestions they considered necessary. He thought tho committee should have some say in what was going on in this direction. The motion was carried.