Distress in Sydney.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7269, 24 July 1893, Page 2

Distress in Sydney.

In an article on the distress in the city the Sydney Daily Telegraph rays :—That the extent of tbe poverty prevailing is not generally known by those involved in the busy whirl of oily life is nut surprising. Some of it is forced under notice occasionally, but to tbe men and women who come into tbe city for business or pleasure and, having accomplished their object, return to their suburban homes, only the most superficial idea of it is possible. They do not see the crowd of men at the labour bureau, nor h ar tbe many applications there for food as well as for work, ihey are not aware of the throngs around cheap restaurants at night awaiting tbe generous aid of the proprietor in the shape of scrap >. They do not observe tbe hundr ds who have penny meals every day at the Mission Ohurcb at the corner of Musses and Bathurst streets, or the hundreds more who are fed at the Sydney soup kitohpn in the same quarter. They have never seen the regiment of men lie down at night with a blanket each on the cold boards of a woolshed on Cowper’s Wharf. They have not scanned the faces nor heard the histories of the people who crowd the Benevolent Asylum on ration day. They have not seen what the missionaries of the Oity Mission have seen at their halls and on their rounds in the various suburbs. They bavs not sat for a morning in the office of tbe Sydney Charity Organisation Society and listened to tbe varied applications. They have not inquired of members of tbe 23 metropolitan branches of tbe society of St. Vincent de Paul as to tbe strain upon their funds. They have not visited the recently established relief depot at Darlinghurst. They have not inquired of the various semi priva’e Church organisations. 1 hoy have not walked through the Domain and around Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair at midnight and observed \ the half-frozen “ doesere " under the rooks ;

they have not travelled tho streets of the city at hours when they are practically deserted, and seen at almost every refuse-box the men and women fossicking, not merely for rags bits of mstal, and other similar odds and ends, but for pieces of bread and “ specked ” fruit. Those who hare done and seen all this are able to form some estimate of the extent of destitution prevailing; those who have not will hardly be able to realise it. Some of the cases which have recently come under the notice of relieving organisations are pitiable in the extreme. A great deal of tbe poverty ia traceable to intemperance, but the larger portion of the present distress has been occasioned by the retrenchment which has been so general during the past year. Excivil servants, clerks, shopmen, wharf labourers, and artisans generally are to be found iu numbers (in any suburb you like to chance upon), with nothing in their homes in the shape of either furniture or food, and momentarily expecting to be turned oat by tho landlords. The landlords, by the way, although generally credited with stonyheartedness, are in many instances displaying towards their penniless tenants a charitable* ness worthy of emulation in other quarters. There are, not unnaturally, many stories in currency as to inhuman treatment by landlords ; but, as a set-off, people engaged in affording re'ief can, and do, mention not a few instances of very considerate treatment by landlords.