WILL WORKSHOPS HANDS LOSE ON PROPERTIES?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18189, 23 June 1927, Page 9

WILL WORKSHOPS HANDS LOSE ON PROPERTIES?

To the Kditor. Sir,—Reading: through your paper one has to stop and think on many subjects. Unemployment is one column that makes one shiver these wintry days. In Tuesday’s “Star” it stated the great number of houses empty in the suburbs of Christchurch, being for sale, newly built and otherwise. One has only to ride around St Albans, for instance, to see “ For Sale” on every third house in occupation. Now, the question worrying many workers of Addington Workshops at present is if they and their families have to go to Dunedin, when and how will they dispose of their homes and property? The Government have offered some thousands to transfer mortgages, and think of the losses on furniture and effects. All cannot be packed, especially if one has nowhere to put the goods on arrival. Property is sure to go up in Dunedin and rooms will be at fancy prices. Somehow the whole thing seems absurd. To transfer hundreds of men to another town on a so-called brain-wave of one or more men seems unfair to a man because he is a worker. Also it seems a terrible waste of the public’s money.

Men who have sons serving their apprenticeship here will have to leave the boys here, and these days a good parent likes to keep an eye on his lad’s doings at work and play. Girls, too, will have to look for lodging if left. No man will be in a position to refuse his job to-day or following days. The transfer of men now and then, maybe, is necessary, but to tell hundreds to pack up and get to Dunedin seems to call for some thinking both from a hardship and economic point of view*. The strain of a gramophone record haunts me already, namely. “Just a Little Cottage by the Hillside.” That is what we shall have to cry out to the ticket clerk at the Christchurch station when he asks “ Where to?” The man in the silk hat and spats may well say 9s a day is good pay, or get out (to Dunedin), or go under, but probably he does not actually understand. He has only to tell James, his chauffeur, where to drive to, or “ Pack my things, I am leaving for Dunedin for a joy ride,” but to the man in Addington Workshops such a notice makes him see funny things through his tobacco smoke, and he has to groan and say—well, I shan’t say it here. I guarantee if a vote were allowed, not too many w*ould want to go to Dunedin.— I am, etc., ADDINGTON DEPENDENT.