UNEMPLOYMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18833, 23 March 1931, Page 2

UNEMPLOYMENT.

To the Editor of the “ Timaru Herald. - ' Sir,—At the fortnightly meeting of the Unemployment Committee the Commissioner states that in cases men were working under the scheme and were not providing for their dependents but were found to be drinking or gambling with their money earned. I think it is very right, as the Commissioner says, to hand these men's wages over to their wives, instead of to them, and to see that the men did not take it from their wives for drink or gambling afterwards. And if that did not remedy the trouble not to employ them at all. But what of the single men who do the same with their money earned? Are they to go scot free? These men who waste their money on drink or gambling should not be given work at all. We all pay the unemployment tax to help find work for the unemployed, not to keep these men in drink money, etc. I myself am a young man, and I do not spend my money on drink, smoking, or gambling. All this money wasted by these weak-kneed weakminded mugs would be a regular godsend to some other men married or single who were in urgent need of work and the money. It is up to the Unemployment Committee to see that when they give a man work that he is not an ‘ habitual drinker or a gambler. Times are very hai-d for one and all just know and these foolish men are old enough to have sense to know that this is not the time to waste one’s money on drink and gambling. I think the Council ought to pay all married men the same day they finish work for these men are very hard up, and their wives are in urgent need of the money, more than the single men who could wait till Saturday for their wages.—l am, etc., RICHARD BARRON.