THE LAST DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 493, 30 June 1932, Page 11

THE LAST DAY.

Provision of Relief by the Hospital Board. THE ARMY OF WANT. It was the last day, but most of them did not believe it. They stood, closely crowded, in the yard of the Hospital this morning, the drone of conversation punctuated by the steady shuffling and stamping of feet. Th.e fog filled the place as though some palpable liquid had been poured into a container. Somewhere the sun was shining, but it had not yet penetrated the mist that pervaded this place so thickly that people in far corners presented a nebulous outline. It was a depressing scene The ground was wet, as though rain had recently fallen, and the crowd looked cold and dejected. The air was still, as though locked by the fog, and through it breath issued visibly, to hang in a brooding nimbus about the faces. The smoke of an occasional cigarette made a patch of denser whiteness. There was no animation, no cheer, apparently no hope. The burden of unemployment seemed to have depressed the spirits of these people beyond the point where resiliance was possible. On their shoulders the spectre of want sat like a grisly old man of the sea. Not Believed. They did not believe it. The morning papers had said that to-day would be the last day that the Hospital Board 1 would give the relief that it considered the Unemployment Board should provide. They discussed this in a spiritless, desultory manner. The import of the announcement seemed hard to grasp. “ Just lies,” mumbled a grev-haired man, as much, it seemed, to himself as to those about him. “ Got to have tucker somewhere .... can’t starve.” His eyes searched the fog, and rested for a space on a child, clinging to its mother’s skirt, its thin legs working like pistons as it moved the frayed sandals up and down in an effort to keep its feet warm. “ Won’t starve,” said the man, and his voice trailed off into a growl. The talk went on, small groups forming in haphazard fashion. stranger talking to stranger, but all talking topics that were of common interest only to such people as these. Relief Tickets. There were occasional interruptions when a clerk pushed his way through the throng, hugging files of papers tightly, until, arrived at a central spot, he held them out and called briskly the names of the people concerned. It was reminiscent of a non .-com. during the war. His tone was brisk, official, unimpassioned—and final. Name after name he called, handing to each responding individual the slip of paper that meant food and the means to live, varying the regularity of his monologue only with the occasional laconic intimation: “Relief refused.” Nothing else was said. There was no arguing, no complaining. Somebody would get nothing. Well, who cared? Whose business was it to care? You can’t stop to talk about these things when there are hundreds waiting. The voice went on, calling name after name, and the slips were handed over with nearly always the same intimation: “One week.” The exception was when the clerk said, “ Two weeks.” That meant that there was illness in the family for which the two weeks’ relief had been granted. In between the excursions of the clerk the conversations droned on. “ The last day . . . don’t believe it . . . they said that two years ago.” Burden of Complaint. Thus it went on, with scraps of talk about relief jobs, the lack of unity among the unemployed, the incompetence of the authorities, and the general burden of complaint against fate in general drifting through and punctuating it with a hundred incongruities. Children, wide-eyed with interest, but shy of all these people jostling about them, hung close to parental protection, and seemed to wonder what it was all about. The sun was beginning to break through the fog at last and was lighting their faces with a soft incandescent glow. All this talk meant nothing to them. They knew only that it was cold down here in this fogsmeared well, and that somewhere, just over the tops of the building, the sun was coming through. The adults seemed steeped in the economic fog, and they saw no sun breaking through. They had not the wisdom of the children.

(Statements made yesterday by Hospital Board representatives appear on page 4.)