Above All: "Codlins Your Friend"

Southland Times, Issue 13430, 16 April 1896, Page 3

Above All : "Codlins Your Friend"

(By Telegraph.)

Wellington, April 15.

A deputation of unemployed waited on the Priemier to-day. Mr Seddon, replying, •aid permanent grappling with the difficulty was impossible because if they mitigated the trouble to-day next week there would be the same number of unemployed in the towns. New Zealand was in a fairly satisfactory position and this no doubt induced unemployed from other colonies to come here. The true solution wai>, put the men on the land, but the Government had no land with which to carry out the proposal. Personally he would like to see a by-law preventing sandwich men walking the streets. With every sense of the responsibility of what he was Baying he would say that it was better that a man and his children should starve than that it should be cast up at the children at a future time that their father was a sandwich man. It was never intended that charitable aid should be used as a means of degrading the recipients of it. The deputation could take it that what the Government would do for them was, (1) employment on co-operative works in accordance with appropriations ; (2) the alternate system of putting people on the land ; (3) workmeu's villages for men having intermittent employment. As to destitute persons unable to do hard work there was a proposal to find them special and separate work on the co-operative system. He would consult the Labour Department as to what could be done to relieve immediate wants.