USE OF UNEMPLOYED

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1931, Page 8

USE OF UNEMPLOYED

CRITICISM OF COMMITTEE.

RESENTMENT OF ALLEGATIONS.

That criticism for which there was no justification had been levelled from .time to time at the Stratford Unemployment Committee and at the Stratford Borough Council with regard to their distribution of men to relief works was a contention advanced at the meeting, of the committee on Monday night by the chairman, Mr. N. B. Fletcher.

Certain remarks had been made at a recent meeting of the Stratford County Council, said Mr. Fletcher, which indicated that too many men were being employed on the borough works. People who voiced such criticisms, he said, did not realise the difficulties with which the borough engineer was confronted in placing men on work. Frequently the men who were most in need were the ones who, for one reason or another, were unable to do as good a day s work as the average man.. Those men could not all be put on one job; they had to be split up and distributed among the better workers, whose example served as an encouragement. It was all very well to say that the men should go to the country, but for a married man to adopt that course ’ meant he had to keep two homes going, and he could not afford to do it. Furthermore, the men could pick up supplementary work in the town that would not be available to the same extent in the country. ‘fit has been said that the men are not doing their best and are loafing on the job,” Mr. Fletcher stated. On . the whole the men were doing good work, he declared, and eveh those who would never be good navvies were doing their best to keep up with the others to whom.navvying was more in their line. Some could not do the work because they were physically unfit, and there were a few who never had been and never would be good navvies. •WEATHER UPSETS ALLOTMENTS. The weather, too, had greatly interfered wit lithe work, and in his efforts to enable all the men to get in their full quota every week the borough engineer was faced with a big problem. If he put the men off on account of the weather it was very hard for him to arrange matters so they could make up the lost time.' If he started them on a wet day the rain often became so heavy that the men would have to stop work, and people who saw the men sheltering under hedges were inclined to say, “Oh, look at those loafing unemployed.” The criticism had • been altogether too severe, he continued. When the schemes were first put into operation the borough council had been the only body with a complete, organisation to deal with the schemes ancT to put them into operation. Adverse criticism therefore, reflected on the borough council as well as on the Unemployment Committee and the borough engineer. Mr. T. R. Anderson, chairman of the county council, asked for instances of how the council had criticised the committee. Mr. S. Spence read Press reports of the last county council meeting. Mr. Anderson had said the . men were going no good “scratching grass on the streets,” while Cr. L. Bunn had stated that “as long as the borough takes the good men no good will be done in the country.” Mr. Anderson pointed out that his remarks had been made in reply to a letter from the Prime Minister ’ requesting the cooperation of all local bodies in providing work for unemployed. “I was criticising the schemes laid down by the Unemployment Board, not the committee," he said. Mr. Fletcher: Yes, you were quite in order. COUNTY STAFF CHEAPER. “You all know that the backblocks are up against it and when we had the unemployed on the Tututawa Saddle it cost the Mangaehu Riding a lot of money,” said Mr. Bunn. The first gang that was sent out, he stated, had been as good as any, but the second lot had been poor in comparison and the work could have been done more cheaply by the county staff. Mr. Anderson: It cost £llO and could have been done by our .men for £7O. All the time the second gang, was there it did not take off two corners, continued Mr. Bunn. When he said that the borough council kept the good men in the town he was referring to the difference between the two gangs. Mr. M. P. Ford regretted that the men could not be encouraged to work in the country. “The unemployed are going to be with us for a good while and I would like to see them engaged on productive work,” he said. ’ “We in the borough would be as delighted as anyone to see the unemployed working in the backblocks, but if the Unemployment Board does not draft schemes that will encourage the men to go to the country you cannot expect the borough council to refuse to make use of the men,” said the Mayor, Mr. P. Thomson. A general reply to criticism was made by the borough engineer, Mr. L. B, Davis. Every man who lived in the country was sent to county jobs, he said. The men were distributed to the various jobs as evenly as possible, and the accusation that the good men were kept in the borough had no basis in fact. A bus was run to the Tututawa job, but it was an open lorry. The men got wet going to the job, they had to work all day in wet clothes and return wet. Men could not be expected to do good work under those conditions. The first gang that had been sent had been the pick.of all the unemployed—men who had been on borough works for five, or six years on and off. It had been said that the men were only chipping grass in the streets, Mr. Davis added. Since the schemes commenced to operate the unemployed had shifted 18,000 yards of clay, had formed 54 chains of streets —work that would ordinarily have cost the borough council £l4OO. To criticise the men adversely through the Press was not the way to get the best work from them. Of the total, 60 per cent, were good workers, 20 per cent, were tradesmen who could not be expected to be first-class navvies, and 20 per cent, were composed of the type which would be unemployed at any time. Besides the big works he mentioned, the men had made 298 feet of : tunnels under streets. That was permanent and necessary work. From 130 trees felled 135 cords of firewood had been cut and distributed to necessitous cases. Seven or eight men who were suffering from war disabilities and could not do hard work had been employed on park improvements, while unemployed carpenters had been working on the grandstand. They were more useful there than on the streets. .At. no time bad any man refused to go to the country jobs except when a man had not expected to be sent from the borough and had not had his lunch. The cost to the borough council for tools had been £94 and insurance of the men amountc to £3 per week. “I am glad that these matters have been ventilated and I hope the discussion tonight. will have cleared the air all round,” Mr. Fletcher concluded.

ELTHAM LADIES’ GOLF CLUB. DRAW FOR AUGUST MEDAL ROUND The August L.G.U. medal round of the Eltham club wil Ibe played on Friday. The draw is:—Miss Wilson and Dlrs. de. Launay, Mrs. Casey and Miss Wanklyn, Dlrs. Wills and Mrs. Morton, Mrs. McGarry and Mrs. Stewart; Miss Stewart and Mrs. J. Quin, Mrs. Haswell and Airs. Stanners, Dlrs. Wylds and Mrs. Hessell, Miss Pease and Mrs. Fi-.lier Mrs. L. Quin and Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. McGregor, Mrs. Weir and Dlrs. Gray, Mrs. Chrystal and Mrs. Robinson, Miss Gibson and Mrs. Luxtqn, Miss Burrows and Miss Sheehy, Airs. Darling and Airs.. Alalone, Aliss O’Neill and Aliss Harcourt, Airs. G. -Preece and Airs. Treweek, Airs. L. Preece and Aliss Riddle, Aliss Frood and Aliss Ritter. Aliss O’Hagan and Aliss Kelly, Aliss Carter and Miss Gibb, Aliss Fisher and Aliss Faunin, Aliss Fissenden and Aliss Brooker. i PUBLIC READING MATTER. The following new books have been added to the Stratford public library for July:—Secrets of a Solicitor, E. Alaltby; The Counterfeit Wife, J. G. Dunton; Miss Pilgrim's Progress, E. Y. Aliller; The Falcon Alystery, S. Guise; Trooper Fault, J. Lambourne; Gauntlet, Lord Gorell; Glory Place, Miriam Bower; The Strangler Fig, J. S. Strange; Satin Straps, M. Greig; Rival Ranges, R. S. Horton; Oriflamme, S. Seifert; Dlemory of Grange, D, Fisher; The Big Heart, J. C. Brandon (replace); The Greatest Game, C. L. Reid; Shadows of Splendour, B. Hewitt; Lucretia Lombard, K. Norris; The Vintage of Yon Yee, L. J. Alilne; Rustlers and Ruby ■ Silver, Chas. H. Snow; Of that Red Soil, Joan Kennedy; How Now, McLean ‘I, Geo. Goodchild; The Mantle of .Saltash, AL Al. Price; On the Night Express, F. DI. White; Twilight in Rhodesia, O. C. Barron; The Sago of . Hans Hansen, Oscar Asclie; Top-storey Murder, A. Berkeley; Guarded Watch, F. Sloan; Spooky Riders, W. G. Tuttle; The Thousandth Dian, Lewis Cox; Honeymoon Hate; Dlrs. C. N. Williamson; The Trivial Round, Elizabeth Carfrae; Devil Afay Care, A. G. Hales; The Snow-burner, Henry Oyen (replace); The Island of Terror, Sapper; ■Meet iny Friend, Leslie Beresford; The Man with the Afask, Richard Dehan. ? CENTRAL DIVISION REFEREES. The matches and the referees for the junior Rugby games in the Central Division to-morrow are:— First Juniors. Toko v. Cardiff at Toko, 2.45 p.m., Dlr. A. Harrison, Stratford v. Inglewood at Stratford, 2.45 p.m., Mr. W. Davis, Milhirst v. Pukengahu at Midhirst, 2.45 pan., Dlr. J. Carlson. Third Grade. School v. Dfidhirst at Dlidhirst, 1.30 p.m., Mr. P. Harkness. Fourth Grade. School v. Toko at. School, 2.45 p.m., Dlr. I S. Phillips, Inglewood v. Stratford at Stratford, 2.45 p.m., Mr. H. DI. Limmcr. ‘ PERSONAL AND GENERAL Air. W. Waters, formerly town clerk of Eltham and now of Wellington, paid a short visit to Eltham this week. Mr. C. A. Wilkinson, ALP. for Egmont, who spent the week-end in his constituency, returned to Wellington yesterday. He was accompanied by Airs, Wilkinson. A bent radiator and a crumpled mudguard were the damage done to a motor car yesterday when it collided with the back of a lorry parked in Broadway, Stratford. The car was driven by Mr. W. Robinson, Brooks Road, who swung in towards the parking area to avoid a car driven by Air. J Hinton, Stratford. They could not expect help who would not help themselves, said Dlr. J. C. DlcDowall when representatives of the relief committee and the horticultural society expounded a gardening scheme for unemployed to .the Stratford UticmployI inent Committee on Monday night.