SOCIAL SECURITY AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21154, 29 September 1938, Page 11

SOCIAL SECURITY AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES

To the Editor ot " The Tlmaru Herald ” Sir,—Supporters of the National Party are becoming mere wild in t'.eir statements, and more daring in their actions, the nearer we draw to the election. Apparently driven to desperation by the failure of their Party's principal speakers, some local National supporters recently made a secret and ' irregular raid on the books of the Timaru Friendly Societies. They deliberately faked th? figures obtained therefrom. They had those figures printed in pamphcl-t form; and, these they would have doubtless sent to individual members of Friendly Societies secretly, had not the Rev. Clyde Carr exposed their plot, which was evidently that of urging the friendly societies throughout New Zealand, to turn down the Government's social security scheme; a scheme which has been drawn up to give everybody social justice and freedom from cankering anxiety from the cradle to the grave; freedom to live in this beautiful country with no worries about the future, and increasing freedom from preventible diseases. The pamphlet states that. Society members aged twenty will have to pay £9/17/- more per annum, under Social Security, than they are paying now. The ti’Uth, however, is that such members will be called upon to pay only 3/4 more a year, for which they will receive a huge scale of benefits which their Lodges do not provide. The pamphlet also states that members under 40 will have to pay under Social Security, £B/15/- more per annum under Social Security, than they are paying at present, while the truth is that they will pay 18/4 less. The public will form their own opinions of the perpetrators of this deliberate deception; and, electors will know how to deal with them on election day.—l am, etc., A. M. PATERSON.