UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 13 January 1931, Page 7

UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

(To the Editor) Sir. —All the gentlemen that seek to stop works and reduce wages are, I presume, members of some Christian church. If they will read the 7th chapter of Matthew, giving special attention to the first and second verse, this may help them to see as Christians should. The man who gives his labbur for wages, depends on that wage for his living and cannot buy eitheg food or clothing if he has nothing to buy with. Depriving him of his wages or reducing them merely deprives him of the power to buy food', clothing or shelter. There is as much money in New Zealand to-day as there was in prosperous times, but the willing worker is deprived of his share, the money being hoarded up bv usurers. 'The working farmer pays little in wages but much in interest. Wages is reproductive—interest is gone forever. Many farmers arc getting the Unemployment Board to pay half their wages bill. It might be profitable under the circumstances to borrow so that advantage may be taken of the generous offer of the Unemployment Board, and thus pass on the benefits of the unemployment tax to the usurers, but there are many toiling farmers, including returned soldier settlers, who cannot borrow, being too poor. Many returned soldiers do not know how to get exemption from the unemployment tax, and being without the wherewithal to pay must just take the consequences. Why cannot those men be exempt from this tax, and money lent to them to get their fencing done, and other very necessary work?— I am, etc., J. A. CARDNO. 10th January.