Lowering Lifers Standards

Waikato Times, Volume 115, Issue 19272, 2 June 1934, Page 11 (Supplement)

Lowering Lifers Standards

Gradual Declension : New Type Emerging.

(“One Who Is Doing It” in Spectator.)

WHEN A FAMILY of normal habits and desires has lived for three years on a steady income-level, whether it be five, pounds, two pounds, or the twenty-five shillings allowed under the means test regime, it has by the end of that time adjusted itself to the opportunities and limitations which that weekly sum determines. For six years the domestic security and independence of myself, 'my wife, both just over thirty, and our son, now seven, rested upon the two pounds I brought home every Friday from the pit. We shopped within our means and went to a concert or the pictures at our pleasure. The world did as it liked beyond our door when we had closed it in the evening and taken up a book. If footsteps approached and knockings sounded, one of us left the fireside without apprehension, to welcome a' friend or relative with whom we should spend an hour in

of our domestic life lie is anxious to be gone—maybe lie senses the moral relation and is eager to escape from the realisation of how thin are the bounds dividing (him and his from a like fate. He has become the calendar of our existence; to place events as having occurred so much time before and after his visits. We still have friends in that other world •where money Is worked for, though now, when we meet, the topics of the conversation have shrunk to the less vital ones of literature and art and the subject-matter of the weekly lectures* we attend. The only completely free heart-conversation Is with the friends of our own race—the unemployed. We have some relations, too, in that other world w’ho are positively Unhappy Be.cause of Our Condition. Their disturbed state of mind, however, is not conditioned altruistically; rather Is it engendered by the fear that at any moment they may he called upon to contribute from their hard-won earnings some mite w'hlch will help to keep us alive. They need not fear; there is always the river. ... In the transitional benefit <queue at the “Exchange” there is no moaning and groaning, no obvious hopelessness among those who have attended more than months. Newcomers, after their first subjection to the Means Test, wear a hunted expression and are eager to talk of difficulties of managing on the pittance allowed, but they soon settle down like 1 , Milton's kieked-out angels, and make the best of their condition. The country need ' never be afraid of violence while it continues to give them the minimum of food and warmth, and soft-hearted, traders offer ' a reasonable amount of credit. Outside In the queue they may curse and boast that “I shan’t see my kids starve while there is food in So-and-So's grocery window’,” yet if occasion arises to bring them into the supervisor’s office they arc tremblingly timid and pitiably podte. Though not yet quite cut off from thehabits of normal men, they have forsaken the idea of organising for mutual benefit; the cry of "work "will scatter any crowd of discontents, hurrying them in all directions as the phantom warmth of a longlost level of existence floods ’their hearts. Euttho general body of the seasoned unemployed heed not f <thc unsubstantial voice: each ‘ member knows that the only hope lies m an- or the extravagant luck of-a’Jess Oakroyd. Under the very noses Jof the evolutionists, whether they are v avyare mf .it or not,

Cheerful, Unrestrained Conversation.

What was to hinder us from being contented and happy —in regular work, no debts, fifty pounds in Ihc hank, in full benefit willi I he sirk clubs, both insured, just as a safeguard? Now, after three years’ unemployment, our family life is again settled on an understandable level. We know what can be done with twenty-five shillings and threepence in Ihc winter weather when bodies, inside and out, require extra attention. We do not chafe now at the Knowledge that our luxuries slop short far below the level of where the necessities of the “ comfortable and secure” begin; it is natural now lo riddle the cold ashes of the fire in order io mend it again. Maybe the wife finds cynical entertainment in metamorphosing the willing potato; in varying round, it comes on the table boiled, roasted, mashed, in the form of “ chips ” or fritters. On Sunday onlv it is accompanied by meat bought cheaply at 11 closing time " on Saturday night. Home-pride and Independence left us long ago; we lost them when we slunk hack numbed and weary from our wild gropings in the frustrating fog which had cut, us off from “ work." In the long periods when my wife and I are together in t'ho house, we are sensible enough to keep up a continual conversation on topics which permit of no Sliding Towards tho Dangerous Ground of our economic condition. We know how bitter outbursts are bred from ehin-o)n----chcst silences, how easy to abandon one’s self to the weakness of self-pity. But this firmness is patently superficial; bphealb, dominating, enslaving almost, is a / mis4j , y. persisting' fear. With no bank-bajnncij behind us, insurance and pension benefits lapsed, 've tremblingly wait with menial eves closed for some hitch in the ill-regu-iatoil system to force us into we know not what. There is no social stra.lupi below; 'flic .Means Investigator, that mbnlhly rcmiuder that are living b/« charitable Mifl'eranee. is human hut llrjni- Ho is a married man with children 0/ his own; as Cjoou as 1 have signed away every secret

Now Typo of Doing is Emorglng. Eventually it will reach the steady level of ils determined existence/- iv ievtl ns'far below man as Ihc. aijgefs were fluid to be above him. These ' lucky/creatures were intelligent and ktiow nothing but bliss; this emerging type will be intelligent, but experience nothing- except a mighty, enduring fear, and edges of circumstance, further alije'&iT -still, Hie tendencies indicate Ihat Hits being will degenerate into a mere‘s insensate Jump of tlcsli, Into which a charitable system w(ll pump a scientifically determined, amount of suslcnan.ce.