REFUGE IN DOSS HOUSE

Taranaki Daily News, 20 June 1931, Page 5

REFUGE IN DOSS HOUSE

GRADUATE OF UNIVERSITY VAIN SEARCH FOR. WORK. "f. COMMUNISTS AND UNEMPLOYED. "The worst feature of the unemployment problem is the opportunity it is giving to the Communists to spread their propaganda,” said a young inmate of the City Mission doss house at Auckland on Thursday night. “Another striking aspect is the number of educated men one meets -on the roads looking for work. I am a bachelor of arts myself.” A man in his early twenties, of refinement and apparently of sound physique, says the New Zealand Herald, he stated that he had recently arrived in Auckland after walking from Wellington in search of employment. “And here I am now,” he added, “6till without hope of work and sheltering in a doss house. I am not used to this sort of thing”—indeed, it was obvious —“but one becomes hardened.

“I come of good family and my relatives have money, but how can one go begging to relatives? A single man must get out on the road and fend for himself. Friends? I have many friends, some here in Auckland, but then, everyone seems to be having difficulty in making ends meet so that one cannot impose upon other people. Besides, I am ashamed to let them see me now. I am ashamed even to be seen in the city in these clothes. FARMERS IN DIFFICULTIES. . “It took me five weeks to walk from Wellington, and never in that time did I receive more than three and sixpence for one days’ work. Mostly I worked for my food only, but in many cases I found that the farmers were unable to give work even for food. So many of them are hard up against it themselves so ..that they are unable to help others. They are having a very difficult time. I did five days’ crutching for one farmer, and at the end of the time he told me he had no money to pay me with. He had been expecting some money but it did not turn up. His was a genuine case. “One of my greatest difficulties when I started out was that I was wearing good clothes and shoes. When I asked for work people said: ‘lf you have no money why don’t you sell your clothes ?’ Others looked at me and saw that I was not used to hard physical work and refused me on that account. Work or no, work I needed food, but I did not have the courage to ask for it. I went hungry for a time. But one gets hardened. WILLING TO DO ANYTHING. “At some of the places where I sought work or a meal they said: ‘lf we give you something to eat you will go away and tell others that this is a good place to come to, and then we shall have them pouring in.’ Some of them were sarcastic. One farmer said: ‘You know you are safe in asking for work because there. is no work io be had.’ Another told me bluntly that I did not want work I can tell you that I will clean drains, or fish, or do absolutely anything as long as it is work. / “But I do not blame these people. They are constantly being appealed to for help for there are literally hundreds of men on the roads. Some men, of course, have been doing this sort of thing for years and do not want work. They spoil it fur the others. More than once when I have asked if I might sleep in a hayshed JI have been refused. I have explained that I neither drink nor smoke and that there would have been no danger from matches, yet I have been turned away and forced to sleep under the trees. “All through the countryside one finds groups of men living in abandoned wliares. They live on turnips, which they boil in kerosene tins or anything else suitable. Potatoes and fruit have finished now and turnips are the only things they can find. They soon grow weak on this diet and unfit for hard work, even should they be fortunate enough to find it. In one whare I came across were six men, four of them ex-soldiers. SAFEGUARD OF CLEANLINESS. “Another ex-soldier I met had been badly gassed and wounded in one leg. He was really ill. He called at a house to ask for food, but they said: ‘You exsoldiers have been telling the same tale ever since the war? The people in the country have been inundated with out-of-work men asking for work or food, so I suppose they are not to be blamed if they lose patience sometimes. “But the most serious part of it all is that the Communists are making capital out of the situation. Already one can hear murmurings. A man who normally would not have the slightest interest in a Communist if he heard him talking at the street corner becomes demoralised when he has no work and no food, and thoughts of which he has never before dreamed' enter his mind. I know that from my own experience. When one has finished a long day’s tramp and is tired and hungry, but has no food, all sorts of queer thoughts enter the head. “It is all right while one keeps bodily clean —I spent my last coppers on a bath as soon as I reached Auckland —but if one neglects to wash and shave then one falls into a rut which it is very difficult to get out of. On my long journey I washed my clothes and bathed in the" creeks. I still carry my toothbrush. It all helps one to keep one’s self-respect. “I find that the cities are the worst places for the unemployed. To-morrow I shall search again for work, but what hope have I of finding it? One cannot remain in one place too long and risk being arrested as a vagrant. One must keep on the move. On Monday I shall take to the road again. In which direction? I don’t know. One direction i« as good as another.”