“A HARD-LUCK TALE”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 139, 15 June 1932, Page 6

“A HARD-LUCK TALE”

Sir, —Kindly allow me space in your valuable paper. I am not in a position to be able to buy the “Chronicle,” but I am very thankful to bo allowed to see one sometimes. What I wish to say is that it is pleasing to note the good that is being done by the Rev. H. G. Goring and Rev. R. Dudley in supplying boots, etc., to those in need, but what I do not understand is his idea of not wanting to listen to a hard luck tale. It would make a real he man shed tears of blood to have to put a tale over at all hard or otherwise. I wonder if either of these two gentlemen have ever been told a real hard luck tale. I, myself, am a married man with a wife and four boys and am a relief worker on 4A scheme. I have no home of my own for those whom I love; they are in the South Island, while I am here in the sunny North working for 5s (five shillings) a week; of that I am only able to use 4s as 1s pays the tax on the £1 that is paid by tho Unemployment Board that goes south to support four boys and their mother. I have not been near or I have not seen my family for over 18 months. I am not able to earn enough to go home or even bring my family to mo, this being the only kind of work the board seems able to find for me, and when I road in your paper a notice to relief workers to be at the Labour Office on certain days what chance have wo poor devils got of being on the spot. With my 4s per week it would take two weeks’ wages to pay the fare both ways. My old bones certainly could do with some old rags for the cold wet days here j’i the back country cut a man’s very heart out. I have not had one under garment on my body for four months. 1 was given' work cutting scrub for throe months at a wage of 12s fid pet week and find myself in food and still had to support those poor little souls in the South and I had to leave that job to walk 20 z miles into "Wanganui to draw the £1 that 1 was allowed bv the board. To do this was. or should, not have been necessary, for Y wrote to the board asking them to nnv mv wife what money was due to mo and for three weeks they no reply, so I was forced to walk all that distance and when that was done 1 was luckv to fall in with this job at five shillings a week, so it is easily to bo seen how much clothing, boots, etc., I am able to buy. Only once in the history of my whole life have I had to ask assistance and that not so very long ago. I arrived in Wanganui on . . . c nwfn.

I might sav, one of the most awru. nights in tile history of bad weather, my blankets and my whole outfit were hist like a wet sack taken out of the river, and when I went into a tarm house not many miles out ,of Wanganui and asked to bo allowed to sleep in a shed the farmer ordered me off with a threat to send for the police. I was told that there are too many ot your sort in this country, so I just carried on into Wanganui Police station and they could do nothing for me; all I got from them was Hullo vou’re game, aren t yon? • nothing else to do. T sistanee on all occasions that night until I made my mind that the Sall tion Armv may do something and i was there that 1 met with success. It was there I met tho grandest man I have ever met. n man who took me into his own home and fed me and cheered nm in tho midst of his own family. Tn that man s eves T reny the true love that a man has for lus follows or fcllowmen. If & n y ™ an over wishes to meet a true Goff fearing man then he should meet Adjutant Hawkes nnd look into that grand man’s eves and see tho true love for the helpless. As long as I live will I ever forget that splendid man. I was speaking to some farmers a little while ago. trying to secure some work, when one gentleman who owns three thousand acres of land said to. me: ‘‘lf I was as powerful and as big as vou are 1 would never bo out of work.” Ho asked mo what had I done was all my money. I was over forty years old, surely I should have enough to live on in those bad times anff when he wns told that 1 had twelve years in His Majesty’s Navy and five, years in the Army at one shilling per day, he told me it was a

waste of life. But what belittled his argument was when he said he had been on the land fifty years and admitted he had not got two “bob” to his name,- he certainly i s no credit to this country as a farmer. However, I wished him luck and told him that little birds will sing again, and some of us inay yet have a chance of doing something for ourselves if we are fortunate enough to draw a 10-acre section and in fifty years time what kind of advice would we bo able to give* And, again, with all out faults and tho faults of others there are still some of us who could be treated even as we should be. But when those who fail to do their duty and are tho cause of little children going hungry one would wonder how that man could go home to his own home of full and plenty by r cheerful firo and know that he had not done his job that day and other people’s kiddies are hungry. God knows that if the red tape part of the unemployment relief scheme was cut out how much more happy most of us would be. W. ROYLE RILEY. Kai Iwi, Jiftio 10, 1932.