MY REPLY TO MR DYER.

Southland Times, Issue 21850, 29 October 1932, Page 10

MY REPLY TO MR DYER.

To the Editor. Sir,—Mr Dyer is not a paid servant of the relief workers, but a paid servant of the Government. Mr Dyer cannot possibly pretend that he and . his executive are a non-political organization. They are carrying out the polilitical policy of the present Government and Mr Dyer is in the employ of the Government to do this. This self help idea was launched by the present Government for relief workers, which is principally begging food, to keep balfstarved people from rioting and rebellion and incidentally the more free food distributed the less cost it will be to the Government to keep the people fed. And of course it follows that the more likelihood the Government will be able to pay what is termed our overseas financial obligations, or the interest to the financial octopus who has possession of New Zealand and turned our country into something resembling a huge convict settlement. In the strict sense of the word every bag of potatoes and every carcass of mutton collected by Mr Dyer- is a donation to the bondholders. Butchers who have to pay rates and employ men will sell less meat and mutton, grocers will sell less butter and eggs and bacon, and consequently will have to turn their employees out on the unemployed, who will be in turn be fed at relief depots. The more good work Mr Dyer does in his begging expeditions the more stifling are its results on trade. What tragic results it is bringing to the ■ recipients of these gifts—lining up like animals at a salt lick. I am sorry to think that the editor calls this an achievement. This shameful business is Mr Dyer’s Self Help scheme. An appropriate name would be self destruction scheme. Mr Dyer is swelling’ with importance at what he calls the success of the scheme. Poor Mr Dyer is merely a tool used in the hands of much cleverer men than he. The suggestion that men’s political freedom will be interfered with is purely a bogey introduced by the editor of the Times. How dreadfully concerned is the editor and Mr Dyer over the relief workers’ freedorrf. The relief worker can be deprived of his home, his wages, his right to work, fooled out of his transport, his firewood, robbed of his self-respect by sending him to Dyer’s tucker dump, sentenced to three days a week in a ditch for being unemployed, yet Mr Dyer and the editor is taking a very firm stand over retaining his political freedom. The registering of an industrial union does not infringe on any member’s political rights. There is nothing in the rules and constitution of the union which binds any member to voting for any political party.—l. am, W. C. DENHAM*