'Lang’s Chickens'

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 192, 3 November 1927, Page 20

'Lang’s Chickens'

Home to Roost EMPTY COFFERS NOTHING FOR RELIEF WORK Mr. Lang’s chickens are coming home to roost from various directions, and it has now been discovered that relief works, which had been provided by the late Government for the unemployed, are finishing up almost simultaneously with the inception of the new Government. The allotment of money for relief works in the metropolitan area, covering the employment of 535 men, will expire next Friday, writes a Sydney correspondentThe funds, which the Lang Government had provided for relief work at Broken Hill, will also have been completely expended next week. The Minister of Labour and Industry, Mr. Farrar, in revealing these facts to a deputation of unemployed, was informed that one man’s registered number at the exchange two months ago, was 19,000, and that another man had found himself carrying the 24,000 th on the list. CARRYING THE BABY The deputation admitted that the unemployed was not the present Government’s “baby,” although it would have to carry it. Mr. Farrar said that the genuine unemployed would be treated by him with the same sympathy which he had manifested when he was previously in office. He would go into the whole question, and would, as far as possible, provide work for those who were looking for it and wanted it. One of the deputation, an ironworkers’ assistant, who was married and had two children, said that he had never worked in this country, although he had been here three months, and had paid his own fare from England. A well-dressed member of the deputation adopted a somewhat aggressive attitude toward the Minister, and said it looked as though the new Government had no concrete proposal to alleviate the position of the unemployed. “GET INTO COUNTRY” Mr. Farrar: Why, the Government has not been in office for a week! You say you are a single man. Well, if I were a strapping young man like you, I would not stay in the city, but would get away into the country. ‘‘ls work guaranteed there?” asked the man. “I have a friend who has been on the track for four years driving brumbies.” Mr. Farrar: Don’t you swallow all those tales about the brumbies. There are very few brumbies left in this country. In anything I can do for the unemployed, married men with children will have the preference.