“PATHETIC.”

Southland Times, Issue 20522, 26 June 1928, Page 3

“PATHETIC.”

To the Editor. Sir, —After reading Mr Adam Hamilton’s, M.P, for Wallace, speech in your report of the annual conference of Southland M.P.’s and local bodies representatives, the thought came to me “how pathetic!” Here is a gentleman who a little while ago was on a visit to Australia and came back and told us that the Australians had “beautiful cities,” but “no farms.” Evidently he could see the camel in the Australian’s eye but couldn’t see the elephant in his own.

In his speech Mr Hamilton stated that this matter of unemployment is to-day a national problem, not so much in providing money for relief as in endeavouring to find the cause. “Pathetic.” Mr Hamilton thinks it is not much of a problem to find a million or two in money, all that is necessary is to ‘‘make a raid” on the farmer’s wages, the produce of the land. When Mr Hamilton says the “State must assist” he thinks the farmers can’t see with so much sand in their eyes, that the weight comes back on them and is squeezing them off the land by the hundreds. Mr Hamilton can’t understand why the unemployment is so acute this year. “Pathetic really.*

Sir, If Mr Hamilton has been interested in your correspondence columns he will have noticed what I said last year that the sore would break out worse than ever this year. And now, Mr Editor, Mr Hamilton is very sympathetic towards making the “unemployment problem a success,” something like Invercargill’s carnival, and make the farmers pay for it, the poor fellow who builds his house (assisted by the Government up to 95 per cent.) where there’s no work. The man who goes out back and subdues the forest and dries up the swamps, and makes the land productive and valuable, this man is to be perpetually punished to provide work for the other “near his home” growing primroses on the Puni. Sir, I think it is high time that this soft and silly talk about the unemployed was stopped. See that the man who works is not robbed of his just reward. Sir, If I actually climbed on to Mr Adam Hamilton’s back and told him that it was his duty to carry me about with him his answer would be, to H—l with you, get off. My answer is the same to him, to H—l with you, get off my back. 1 am, etc. SLIM JIM