DISTRESS NOT APPARENT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17227, 5 April 1930, Page 5

DISTRESS NOT APPARENT

OHEISTCHURCH POSITION CHILDREN'S AMPLE FUNDS

(Bpedal to the Herald.) OHEISTCHURCH, this day.

Although the Salvation Army has jeported great distress in the city, and conditions under which children go hungry to school, inquiries made by a Reporter show that many children, eviili in the poorer districts, have Oiriple hioney to spend on sweets and pictures. : "They're in here with their threepences and their pennies just as much as fiver," said the owner of a 6tore asttf. a big suburban school. "I've heard of some <.-ases of bad distress, but for the .most part the children geeiti to have money to spend, and they're dressed a,s well as they are usdally," he added. There seem, too, just as many childten attending the Saturday matinees at picture theatres, although in some eases the prices are higher than before. Becently 140 children from a suburban school went to the pictures one week-day afternoon, paying (id a head. Similar excursions have been made by the other schools, and by some of high schools. Other storekeepers said that they had found no marked difference in children's purchases of Jollies and fruit. In the intervals at the pictures they came out to buy cakes of chocolates and sticks of lolly just as they have always done.