WORKED ALL DAY WITHOUT FOOD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17882, 25 June 1926, Page 5

WORKED ALL DAY WITHOUT FOOD.

GENUINE DISTRESS AMONG UNEMPLOYED. Two men who were given relief employment by the Citizens’ Unemployment Committee on the banks of the Wairarapa stream worked all day yesterday without having had anything to eat. The foreman in charge of the work discovered their circumstances, and he brought them some lunch today, and reported the matter to Mr R. B. Owen, the secretary of the committee. “ As all the men working there have large families it is probable that the families of those men were having an equally hard time, so I handed their names to Mrs Herbert, who is to represent the Social Welfare Guild on the committee,” said Mr Owen this morning. “We know that there arc genuine cases of extreme hardship among unemployed, and we are very much concerned that they should not suffer because of the activities of a few revolutionaries. Their claims on the generosity of the public are so strong that we cannot stand by and refuse to assist them. Every rightminded citizen, I feel sure, desires that the genuine unemployed ' should be helped along. There is, of course, a difficulty in separating the genuine cases from those which wished to impose on the fund. Every care is taken in this matter.” Mr Owen added that the foreman had assured him that lie was quite satisfied with the men who had been sent to the job, and had remarked that they were all triers. More Registrations At Government Bureau. Ten additional registrations were received at the Government Labour Bureau this morning, and also a number of renewals. Two men were sent to private employment. Air E. G. Queree, the unemployment officer, stated that the majority of the men who were now registering were single or were married men with one or two children only. Most of the men with large families had already been placed in employment. One man gave the length of time he had been unemployed as two months, and a number of others stated that they had been out of work three or four weeks.