“TOO OLD AT SIXTY.”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 March 1939, Page 4

“TOO OLD AT SIXTY.”

' (The Editor). Sir, —Mr Robertson’s address upon “The Economic Situation,” delivered last evening to an interested if quiescent audience provided me, as one of the “all invited,” to seek enlightenment upon the subject of the Labour Government’s latest “attempt to solve” it by dismissing from the ranks of its “weaker brethren” all those attaining to the age of sixty. It may only directly affect some 2000 individuals, yet it indirectly affects the economy of as nearly many wives, who may be forced to assist these “age-limit rejects” to find the extra money (beyond the 30s they will henceforth receive from a paternal Government) to pay their butchers, bakers and other local tradesmen —or tighten their belts at the wash-tub or at scrubbing floors. The only other recourse is for their' families to again come to their assistance.

I asked Mr Robertson what affect this latest Labour Government edict would have upon employers generally, and mentioned "their lead” as having possibly led to a recognised Labour Party sympathiser in our local Borough Council copying the good example of “solving the economic” question by giving notice to move, at its next meeting, that the question' of staff (outside) appointments be reconsidered in the light of the new Social Security Scheme. Further, I asked the audience to say what manner of men were these the motion intended to “uplift” or financially destroy. As our member spoke so feelingly of the tears in the eyes of the builder of the new security building in Wellington when handing a replica souvenir of the said building to our humane and widely popular Premier, the Hon M. J. Savage, for whom my own personal esteem is second to none in this community, I also visioned the real tearful faces of some of the wives of the “Over Sixty” in various parts of New Zealand, when the first monthoff pension of their “willing-to-work” husbands is handed them to keep the home going. Little chance for any of these now to have built for them one of the near five thousand government cottages, so badly wanted for those in permanent work, and able to pay the needed rent thereof, a proposition seemingly more urgent than their's. To this only reasonable request for information upon a subject of Social Security, I received an unsatisfying reply, and have therefore thrown the subject open to a wider field of discussion than was possible at the late hour it was when question time came round. Trusting our genial and warmhearted Member will put his Government's side of the question more clearly than it appeared to me at the moment named, and reserving a little further comment upon the subject for others to supply, in support or otherwise of this latest attempt to make an “omelette" for the few with the "broken eggs” of the many. —I am. etc.. N. J. BENNINGTON. Masterton. March 31. 1939.