DISTRESS IN MELBOURNE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2376, 30 June 1892, Page 3

DISTRESS IN MELBOURNE.

Meekoueke, June 21. It is many years since Melbourne and the Colony have been brought face to face with such widespread distress as exists at the present moment, and although steps are being taken to provide work in as many directions as possible for the army of workless ip the city, there are yet no signs that the 'iron grip of dire necessity, under which some thousands of unfortunate people have been struggling for the last two months, is relaxing. On the contrary, privation, want, and semi-starvation stand gaunt and inflexible as the prospects of the gloom to be faced by hundreds of sturdy follows, who eannot, try as they may, get a day’s work, whilst faintly may be heard of the cry of children and the wailing of women. Such a stale of affairs as now prevails on all sides is unparalleled ill the depth o! its pressing severity. From every benevolent or Charitable Society the

confirmation comes that the cry of the unemployed is only too genuine and too real.

Both the Argus and the Age have have had special reporters inquiring into the actual extent of the distress, and the Age writes as follows : Going amongst them and visiting their homes one is able to speak with confidence of the reality of sufferings, and though in a couple ol days one cannot see a tithe of the sharp privation that are being endured by hundreds of one’s fellow citizens, enough may be seen to make the heart of the least"susceptible and sentimental ache. The districts where the keenest distresss is felt are the suburbs where in prosperous times the working classes mostly chose to reside, and investigation in these suburbs reveal many harrowing incidents and a general deplorable state of affairs. In hundreds of homes men have sold their furniture article by article and stick by stick, in order to ward oft’the desperate day that has been creeping on them steadily for weeks past when there should be neither the wherewithal nor any prospect of providing expectant mouths with bread. They are in truly a lamentable state, for in nearly every case they are found to be too proud to ayply to the recognised channels of assistance, and so they are living under inconceivable circumstances of misery, trusting forlornly to tfye future to bring them some Tffitter fortune. In scores and scores of families the rooms have been stripped of everything that makes them inhabitable, the people living in many cases in a single room, live on in hunger, cold, and every kind of wretchedness. In not a few cases the little homes have been left bare, and there are cases where widows had to dispose of their clothing even in order to provide their children with sustenance.” Owing to the previous graphic descriptions in the Argus the charitable have been sending in large donations to that paper and the Mayor, and strenuous efforts are being made to cope with the emergency.