UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19010, 29 July 1933, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

ALLEGED REMEDIES FUTILE. • i SERIOUS POSITION IN CITIES. Dealing with the unemployment situation, Colonel Closey, when speaking at Ngaruawahia last evening, pointed out the futility of the alleged remedies which were being tried at present. “The authorities in Auckland stipulated that unemployed men must cultivate vegetable gardens to qualify for relief. As a result there are no fewer than one hundred and ten former market gardeners on relief work, many of whom are Chinamen. Is that a sensible solution?” asked the speaker. lie went on to point out that Thames and Birkenhead were not lighting their streets at night as an economy measure, although 80,000 horse-power was running to waste at Arapuni. The stamps and deeds registration ofilce was delivering its letters by hand. The Railway Department in Auckland had cancelled eleven telephones. The Post and Telegraph were conveying their mails to Newmarket and Parnell by hand truck. This savoured of people trying to live by doing one another’s washing, and was simply making the position worse.

The Farmers’ Union had fitted ten thousand 'unemployed men with boots free of cost, yet boot factories and tanneries in' Auckland were idle, and at the same time many farmers found it did not pay to remove the hide from a dead beast on account of the wholly inadequate price received.

“Does "not this* indicate that the means of exchange, the only thing we lack, has let us down? Solve this problem arm you have solved most of the rest,” said Colonel Closey.