Workless Army

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 377, 11 June 1928, Page 14

Workless Army

“Tramps ” of all Ages THOUSANDS ON THE MARCH IN ENGLAND Tits trsnp. so rare a bird on the roads of England during the -war. has renamed to them in some numbers. He is non the tramp of the comic papers, either; he is a roar ■who is honestly in search of w»fc and his plight has attracted me ar.entioa of Par ham=nt. He has come from -he industrially depressed areas. where employment is impossible to secure: and he is drifting to the seath of Engmrd. obtaining an the way sati iabonr as the'workhonses can gire h-m in the hope usually forlorn—cf finding semething for his hands to do. -smites Gov T---e-= in the Melbourne -Herald.” The Ministry of Health has been ad•ersely criticised by the Opposition, for its alleged fait are to cope with the sifnatton: and the hard-heartedness of mnnicipal and other officials. to Then fails the daty of dealing with th*travelling workiess, has been condemned. But Sir Hingsley Wood. Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministrv ~of Health, main tains that a difiicnlt and --rowing problem is being dealt -with as practically and as sympatheticailv as possible. Qnite apart from the marching armv of the unemployed, 24,000 persons are. in the course of a year, brought before the for various infringements of the Vagrants Act. On the actual roads there are 10.122 men, 5-58 women and T 7 children. Th= able-bodied male adults. 15,702 women and 42,000 children. The populaticn of the workhouses 40.54.3: able-bodied poor in receipt of outdoor relief nearly - Wanderers Oct Roads It was just before the House of Commons adjourned for Easter that the problem was debated. At no previous Easter have the beautiful roads of the English country-side been so full of pleasure-seekers in motor-cars, sme-cars, chars-a-bancs, and every other means of conveyance. There is little room for the tramp, except in the hedgerows. A quarter of them, however, were habitual vagrants, and many of them had been dragged down by drink. He went on to deal with the Government’s methods of coping with the difficulty. Oakum-picking had been abandoned and the hours of labour for grinding com, pumping, and cutting wood had been reduced from nine to eight. Stone-breaking was not now practised in the majority of wards. And so the House adjourned for Easter, with the Government still prepared, after the recess, to continue doing its best. Meanwhile the roads are dotted with ; wanderers, and there is more than S ever an opportunity for some new iW. H. Davies to write a sequel to “The Autobiography of Super-Tramp.” Miss Susan Lawrence, one of the Labour members, described the hapless lot of those who had left their poverty-stricken horn in search of work in other parts o. England. Many of them had come to London, only to find that there was no work for them, and consequently they crowded the casual wards of such places as Eton and Aylesbury. She urged that the Government, instead of sharpening up the detection lawE, should cope with the evil in some more effective manner. Sir Kingsley Wood admitted that the majority of those in the casual wards were decent people, who had failed to obtain work. They were too often the victims of trade depression and insane industrial dispute*.