The Sun WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1927. “LES MISERABELS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 233, 21 December 1927, Page 8

The Sun WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1927. “LES MISERABELS”

A “SOB" story from Paris tells, in our cable news to-day, how the very poor in that city of light and gaiety are faring in the bitter midwinter that lias taken an icy grip of a great part of Europe and the United Kingdom. In something like a record intensity of cold the Parisian underworld was pinched so keenly that even the Prefect of Police was moved to a strange act of practical sympathy. All the tramps and hungry vagabonds were rounded up in the night and mustered in police stations where they were served with soup and coffee instead of being punished as outcasts. It is said with characteristic. Gallic emotion that these wreeks of humanity were overjoyed at the surprising reception from their old-time enemies, and that some of them burst into tears at the unexpected hospitality. For once, at any rate, the herald angels will sing over Montmartre.

After those who are familiar with the slums of Paris and the gaunt rookeries of London, Liverpool and Glasgow have shuddered in sympathy with the poverty-stricken inhabitants of such disgraceful haunts amidst advanced civilisation, they should turn from the frosty misery of an Old World winter and see clearly how life goes with the poor in this gay city of Auckland at the flush of a glorious summer—a glory of sunshine, indeed, which suggests that the £9OO a year paid to the official weather prophet for predicting a cold, wet season, might be more profitably spent on the relief of distress. The sum would at least provide a week’s wages for each of three hundred unemployed men during the Yuletide carnival.

Fortunately, Victor Hugo’s grim phrase need not yet be applied to the plight of Auckland’s poor. But it is bad enough to command the serious attention of administrators and citizens who are preparing for a joyous Christmas in summer-time luxury and radiant delight. It is so bad in fact that the effect of miserable circumstances in this merry city overwhelmed the members of the Auckland Hospital and Charitable Aid Board yesterday with alarm. They happen to know the real plight of the poor, and find it extraordinarily difficult to keep their temper in leash or, if you prefer it, in line with the tranquil mood of the season. The board will have to play the part of Santa Claus next week on a large scale. Its generosity will not be confined to the distribution of plum pudding and Christmas cake to an unhappy band of indigent persons and lonely invalids. It will have to take the form of a wide distribution of the plain necessaries of life to hundreds of distressed dependants of unemployed ableffiodied men.

Already, because of the record extent of unemployment during the autumn and winter months, the board has spent £22,000 on the dispensation of charitable aid. It is anticipated that before the end of the financial year the expenditure in practical charity will have topped the record sum of £30,000. This, of course, means that the board’s levy on ratepayers next year will have to be increased far beyond a normally reasonable limit. Members of the board were compelled to speak plainly yesterday about the seriousness of the present circumstances, and the bleakness of the immediate outlook. And they spoke with commendable restraint, as far as the responsibility of politicians was concerned. Indeed, it is surprising that they were content with merely flicking the Government and Parliament for their failure to cope with the blight of unemployment. They would have expressed and exercised the feelings of the whole country on the question had they flagellated the futile Administration and Legislature without mercy. The position to-day in respect of unemployment and social distress is the negation of competent government and a disgrace to representative politicians. As one member of the board put it, “it is high time that those at the head of affairs should be brought to book and do something to relieve the ‘terrible situation.’ ” Carols and compliments of the season are very beautiful, but what a thousand distressed families wanj; is work and the right to earn Christmas cheer.