PAY UP!

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 23 September 1920, Page 3

PAY UP!

NEEDS OF THE PRESENT

A certain business man, upon receiving a request for a cheque for goods bought, sent the following letter: "For the following reasons I am unable to send you the cheque asked for. I have been held up, held down, sandbagged, walked on, sat on, flattened out, squeezed. First by the Government for income tax, war bonus, capital stock tax, registration tax and then by every society and organisation that the inventive mind of man can invent to extract what I may or may not possess.

I have been solicited by the Society of John the Baptist, the Women's Relief Society, the Navy League, the Red Cross, the Black Cross, the Double Cross, the Children's Home, the Dorcas Society, the Y. M. C. A., the ■Y. W. C. A., the Jewish Relief, and every other hospital in town or country —and then, on top of all, comes the Salvation Army. The Government has so governed my business that 1 don't know who owns it. I am inspected, suspected, examined, and re-ex-amined, informed, required, and commanded; so I do not know who I am, and why I am here. All I know I am supposed to be an inexhaustible supply of money of money for every known need, desire, or hope of the human race ; and because I will not sell all I hftye and go without and beg, borrow, or steal money to give away, I have been cussed, discussed, boycotted, talked to, talked about, lied about, held up, hung up, robbed, and nearly ruined; and the only reason I am clinging to. life is to see what is coming next." .