FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

Evening Star, Issue 20132, 23 March 1929, Page 2

FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

OUT OF WORK f ii.vvfi nover '-been out of work in my lile; sometimes had move than I could do, bub it was always a joy ami. never a. toil. How, thVli, can one understand, and so sympathise, with a ’ thing of vhich they never had experience? That is what suggests itself to mens I read the harrowing accounts in the daily papers of the unemployed. As 1 sit hero comfortably housed, fed. and cnlolded in tho good wishes of friends I seem to want for nothing, though, heaven knows,. I need,much. And so it comes about-that these, hundreds of unemployed haunt my day dreams and in winter nights take their scats upon the midnight- pillow, 1 wonder if it Is the same- with others. T have a suspicion that to the..average man and woman-' tho ;unemployed arts little more than a nuisance or a name. They read tho reports in the newspapers (or likely enough they: don't), and say to themselves it's «• bud business, but what can wo do? And they pass tin- problem over to the handful of officials who are directly concerned with it. They go to their work','.or say “On with the dance, let 1 joy be nnconfined.” and ■then an end of it as far as they are .concerned. Well, von ask, what else can we do? A very nauiral (tueslion. Am] tho only answer I can give to it just now is this: you can think about it; you can let your mind and hcarl lor both nil! lie needed in tho solution ot this problem—play about it, and ipol your individual responsibility for it. .1 bat is my purpose just now—to try to start thought about the unemployed among the unthinking mass. How shall one set, about it?

The ancient prophet of lsi';u;l, when Itc. was ;i captive with his people in Babylon, says: "Then I came to (hem of f.he .captivity, . . . And I sat '■'•hen they sat, ami remained t here astonished among (.hern for seven days. ’ ■; [sat when (.hey sat." That is tho first condition of getting to understand anything or anybody. Kzckiel (■ante (o the captives migry nt their idolatries, but when ho sat where they sat, when lie put themselves in their place, pity and love took the uppermost seats hi his mmd. '' I sat when they .sal. Wo cannot understand (lie unemployed (ill we fry to do that. Hnf iiiat takes imagination, and imagination is nor the strong point of the average Mr;tish.or. li is. indeed, one might say. I:is very weakest. It is an Kngiish " 'ritcr ol nolo who tells ns in one of ilis hooks that there is no faculty of our nature which'is more persistently denied its' appropriate work t han imagination. When this faculty is sleeping evil tilings arc very much awake. . . . Imagination is .second sight. r I he dominion of the ewe terminates at the horizon; at the horizon imagination begins. Imagination is the faculty o( realisation ; it takes a surface and constnuts a cube: it takes statistics and fashions a life.” * * * * Well, let ns take the statistics of i he unemployed and try to Hindi the in wit ii Hie —to make them wail; before in in (hub and blood. Mr Mobinson slated at the interview with Air Cob he last week that there were hill unemployed, with (jtii) dependants. That repreunits I.MOd people who arc feeling ihe pinches of poverty. Hui ! here are a great manlier more who can scarcely make ends meet. There are many who have only temporary einyloymciii. .Moreover. even many of those whu can count on a year's constant work do yet siamdy earn enough over household es i.ensc-.s In lay by anything, even il they arc thrifty, for a rainy day. M hairdo'- ‘ Iron Maw of Wage- ’ -(ill operates to a very large degree in iho Labour world. When labour is a commodity to be bought and sold in the market... hk,e pears or pigs, the compel! live regime ordains that wages can never iMe above that average which will sustain a ’.corking man and his h-mily in existence- -at least for any long lime for there is a surplus supply of 1 lie commodity, And (hey cannot -ink below it. for lh.cn flm machine would stop working. The union-, of conr.-c, help somewhat to ameliorate I hi- condition- -o far. at any rale, as -killed lahonr is concerned. Mnl mikilled labour i- a drug in the market, and is regulated by the law of supply and demand. The fornmr is always greatly in exec-- of the latter. We would, thcrclorc, not he far wrong in concluding- that there are, sag. , close upon .‘I.DiH) peoplo in our midst; who have barely the necessaries of life, and not a- lew even as much as that.

Can we try to visualise tins crowd who - arc fighting a grim battle with want? Suppose you inarch them p.-ml; "here Hu; new Post Office is being erected, in Princes street, at the rate of one every minute, how long would if take these 1,000 persons that Mi flobinson says are in dire need to do it? It would take them a little over sixteen hours to pass I he Post Ollicc. In other words, say they start on their procession at !) a.in. when you go down lo business. They stop with yon at o p.m. for lea, and start, again the next morning at the same hour, go on all day without stopping for lunch, and the last units of the procession would not have passed Hie given point when you quit..business the next day at o p.rn. Or suppose you take the larger number—Hie 3,(X!() that are Jiving on the edge of poverty. How long would it take Hiesc 3,000 to pass that selected point? it would take about fifty lionrs. That is to say, you might leave Dunedin by the morning express, go on to Christchurch, spend the night and the next day there, return to Dunedin by the night express, and be in time when you go to breakfast the next morning at 8 o’clock to see the last member of the procession passing Hi.' Dost Office after marching continuously for two days and two nights. That may help to give us a clearer idea of the bald figures of the hard-ups in Dunedin alone. But that is'not all, nor the most important .of the facts.

It is only their skin, so to spook. Uow can we get into llio insido of Lhcinr' t,ho ont-of-work meeting referred to Mr Bryan King gave some significant figures indicative of the hardships. In one case a man had paid £so'deposit on a hofise. Jle could not keep up the interest and vent payments, and lost the lot. A hard-work-ing man with nine children had saved i-’iOU. Every penny of it had gone, and he would have starved but tor private help. Another man with two children had saved £IOO. Every penny of it is gone, as well as some of his li rniture and his wile’s jewellery.”

Mr King asked a hoy who came to his office what he had for hreaklasf,. He replied: “We don’t have any breakfast now. Father's out of work, and we have not had breakfast ior a long time.’’ « » * » These give us windows by which, with a little imagination, we may see what is going on in the minds and hearts of the nnein,ployed, First you have the physical deterioration of the men and women, and still worse ol the children, for they arc to supply 1 he coming generation of workers. Air Heuntree, an authority on unemployment. mid he loam! from household hi id gels ol workers that the hest-fed were only getting two-thirds, and the worst led only one-third, of the food necessary for the maintenance of physical health. It is not, perhaps, so had here, hut it is had enough to produce bodily degeneration among the unemployed. .But the mental and moral degeneration U direr still. Mow can men and women keep up heart when they see their little savings melting away, am! wiih no hope of retrieving them? Who knows save the persons themselves what it is to he out of work; to tramp the streets day after day; to haunt labour offices, and have hopes defeated time after time; to see their wives ami kiddies, not knowing where Iho next meal is to come from, and to have the ■Jiadow of disease darkening their door because of Mie ill-feeding to which ihe family is subject,; to know themselves gelling more shabby in appearance, more unlit for hard work, and with lessening chance of getting it as their mbiistnc" fails; to ho templed to stead to meet the claims of home, or (o forgot it all in drink or in suicide? But ive need not go on. Only it will he good for us to Iry to -it where they sit, if not like iho prophet for seven day-, at least long enough to make ns think. and it may ho piiy and sympathise, and so pm ns on the track of a cure.

A weli-k noun American writ* r re ler- to 11 1 o 1 1 iti erenee of Iho unemployed in a city ns compared wit.lt tlic reentry. I eenden-e :a ll >. 1 cdc.pl a pari id if. In the city the poor man lives ill the ,-iglif. el wen I til constantly changing liaiuls. .Tinl. in the midst el this constant llnx nothing: seems in cnine hi-, way. lie Inns on the hank el a .I’ethesda. lint no chance pushes him in at the right moment. In the city lie knows wealth and wealthy men as a class, net as individuals, and a class, whether rich, political, social, or .-ectariati, is always mure hated limn any el its separate individuals. In the city the ont-et-work man usually lives in the poorest part, in narrow streets, and often squalid dwellings-, that tend to I legal earoksme'S and hopelessness. In the country there are the bright skies, the ever changing beauty ei Nainre. and a hit el a garden fe grew' flowers or vegetables and hit the

lii'mil (ill’ its misery. r l lie she "'I a grmit city keep- the mind alivc and awake :iiid pierced hy its poignant jsrol> 1 < ■! 11 . Further, the unemployed worker in the city IlmK liim.-clf daily in ihe presence of Inxiiri"-, staring at Inin (’ruin the. simp windowsilrcs.-es. jewellery, confections of every M>rt, crouds passing m and ot!I o‘ ten .shops anil dining rooms willi i.iieir three or six eoiir-e dinners, lie leeis. ion, very likely, that lie Inn contributed in a more or less decree to the wealth and splendour that non' seem to mock and insult him. He has helped to hiiiif 1 tip the fortunes (ha; make such success lor olheis. And having brought llmir treasures where they will. Then lake they down his load, and turn him off hike to an ass, to shake his cars And graze in common'. And then, in mention only one thing more: In the eity the ont-ol'-work man is niton kept, sore hy havin':; in live in the presence of his old prosperity. The yliosl of what he was. or might have heen. insults him n hen he walk' abroad. In the country 1m in some degree escapes this tormenting pres,nice of a tyrannous past. Turn your imagination on such considerations as these, and one may gain some insight into what it is to lie unemployed in a city. To those who have health and wealth and work the busy streets of the city are a delight. There is a sense of kinship in the crouds that make life a joy. Hut when enforced idleness has weakened activity and hope deferred makes the heart sick, then the ’’ streets are no longer sympathetic; then the great sea, which used to heave (he strong ship) on, whether it would go or no, opens its depths and drown.-, the broken wreck/’ And how is it all to he remedied? t don't know, t have tried only to start thought on the subject, and T have said enough for the present.