THE UNEMPLOYMENT LEVY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20095, 26 November 1930, Page 15

THE UNEMPLOYMENT LEVY.

ro THK EDITOR DIT THIS PBl'.tSf) Sir, —In the discussion of the Unemployment Act we have learned from Ministers and Press a good deal as to how the Act will bo or should be interpreted and administered. The elaiins of the farmers on the Unemployment Funds have been duly stressed, but there is one class —tlio most deserving of all —whose interests are not so zealously looked after. I refer to the unemployed themselves —to the thousands of workers who have for months been eking out a miserable existence under the poverty line. We know well enough that those of them who are admitted to the benefit of the "dole" system will draw £J la a week, but, if admission of their claim is dependent upon the payment of the first instalment of the levy, I ask how are they to find that sum? There are single men who have been living for months in lodgings, by the grace and charity of householders, workers like themselves, who are perhaps barely making ends meet. There are between 100 and 200 men in the Salvation Army Home. All these are men anxious for work. They have not got a single penny piece.' Are they then to be excluded from the benefits of the dole? If they are, the Unemployment Act, ostensibly designed to help the unemployed, will be the most farcical and ridiculous statute that has ever been passed by the United Party —and it has a good number of addled eggs in the way of legislation to its discredit. X have been asked by numbers of unemployed as to how they stand in regard to this first payment, but I am fis much in a fog about it as the average man, and cannot tell them. Yours, etc.. S.M. November 25th, 1!W.