WHAT DOLE MEANS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 946, 16 December 1933, Page 17

WHAT DOLE MEANS.

Does Not Provide Enough for Proper Food. PLIGHT OF SINGLE GIRLS. (Special to the " Star.") SYDNEY, December 7. A certain amount of public interest has been created here by a cable message from London dealing with the food scale of the unemploy’ed at Home. It seems that a number of specialists appointed by the B.M.A. have reported that the minimum weekly diet required to keep the standard family—man, wife and three children—in health in England would cost 22s 6-id, while for a single man the cost would be 5s 10ld. It appears that the unempioyment allowance for a family of this size in England is 29s 3d a week; so' that the dole at least provides the necessaries of life. But it is obvious that there is very little margin left for clothing and housing; in fact, the contention that the allowance falls far below the requirements of such a family seems undeniable. *

The interest taken here in this matter naturally' centres round the local scale of relief. The New South Wales allowance for a man, wife and three children is only 19s a week; but this is for food alone, as boots and clothing are also supposed to be available for those who can prove that they are positively in need of them. Comparisons between London and Sydney are difficult, if not impossible, because of the differences in prices; but the general impression here is that the people on the dole cannot got enough food to keep them up to a reasonable level of health and strength. The Worst Off. And of all the unemployed who are forced here to depend upon the State for subsistence, the single girls seem to be the worst off. They get only 4s per week to keep them going. On this munificent sum they are expected to find food, clothing and shelter and to keep themselves honest and decent. The other day a letter was read at a meeting of the Council of the Churches which brought out the shocking inadequacy of this allowance in rather a startling way. The writer had gone to the trouble to make certain investigations in public expenditure, and he had discovered that to keep a prisoner in gaol costs the State £1 4s 3d per week; that it costs 14s 9d a week to supply the shark in the Taronga Aquarium with warm water; that to keep a dog in the Dogs’ Home costs 6s per week; and that each cat kept, in the public interest, in the Post Office costs 4s lOd per week. But all that the Government can find for the unemployed single girl is 4s B*d per week, with which she is expected to keep herself in “ food, clothing, house-room and chastity ”. It certainly sounds horrible, and those good easy-going folk who occasionally write to the papers to assure us that the unemployed are pretty well off, and who do not see that it will make much difference to the workers if the flour tax does put another pennyon to the 21b loaf, may be requested to give these facts and figures their serious attention.