THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17467, 30 July 1928, Page 9

THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW.

((To the Editor.) Sip,—"Free Lance" in the Times supplement urges people who can give a shilling to the unemployed relief fund to hand the sum to the Mayor. Unfortunately when I meet the Mayor I haven't the shilling in my pocket or else his Worship is busy talking with some well-dressed person in whose presence I should feel uncomfortable in saying, "Here's my bob." I suppose I could find someone at the Town Hall who would take it on behalf of the Mayor, but it seems a long, long way to go to the Town Hall with a twentieth part of a pound.

And then there's always some importunate widow who comes and asks for a shilling or five or twenty and gets it, and then i feel that I've done my bit for a week or two without holding up his Worship to receive my bob. And then the children will persist in wearing holes in their shoes and pants and soon we'll need a new bucket, and mother trips over the holes in tho kitchen linoleum. Still with it all, I heliovc we'd rake up that shilling with as good graco as tho church collection if only someone would come for it and take it to the undmploycd fund, f don't know whether it's mostly oonceit or laziness or the importunate widow (who is usually of the male persuasion) that keeps me from taking tho shiiiing to tho Mayor by my own unaided ofl'orts, but there it is. And I know others as lazy as myself. If wo can't have an organised collection, let us have collection boxes hero and thero Into which we can slip our shillings when no one is looking. But I'd back the collectors to get a far bigger sum. And I hope someone will hurry up and do something and not leavo those families to live on nothing in tho fortnight intervals between relief Jobs. —I am, etc WIDOW'S MITE.