LOOK UP AND SMILE.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 July 1932, Page 3

LOOK UP AND SMILE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —The unemployment question seems to be the fashionable topic ot interest at the present time, and of course we must all be in the fashion. The newspapers devote many paiagraphs every day to the subject; people of leisure promote entertainments of ■various kinds to raise money for the unemployed; every week somebody makes a house-to-house canvass for tlie same cause, and all would have ,us believe the poor unemployed are enyeloped in a very dark cloud. An old proverb tells us “There is. a silver lining to every dark cloud,” and as it never helps any trouble to dwell on the dark side, suppose we turn this dark cloud of the unemployed inside out and for the silver lining. It is. there all right. In the first place the registered unemployed man has no, worry or anxiety about finding work or getting paid for it; he has been.adopted by a very kind and liberal Government, which provides 'both work and pay and lends a very sympathetic ear to every demand. The pay is perhaps 25 or 30 per cent, less than the recipient earned m ( .the “good times,” but in addition to the money he is provided with, free transport to and from his wonk, free groceries, a large quantity of free clothes, free boots and also repairs to the same, in some cases free rent, the free services of a wood nurse, who also many °extra comforts to the sick, free hospitals when necessary, and free tickets for amusements. Really I think there is a very substantial lining to the o-rey cloud, and I venture to think theie are many in this fair land of New Zealand who are lees fortunate than the ‘‘unemployed,” and who are perhaps more deserving of our sympathy.—-I am, etc., • CHEERIO.