WELLINGTON LABOR MARKET.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2610, 18 September 1909, Page 3

WELLINGTON LABOR MARKET.

UNEMPLOYED COMMITTEE CEASE OPERATIONS. ri’r.n Truss Association.! ' WELLINGTON. Sept. 17. .After considerably relieving the congestion in the local labor market during the T>eriod when the position was most acute, and after giving work and assistance to about 750 men at one time and another, the Citizens Uneni** ployed Relief Committee practically ceased operations yesterday. It ceased • not‘because there were no more men to help, but for the very. simple reason that the fount of public sympathy seemed to have dried' up. her some' time past the' subscriptions have been growing fewer and smaller, the result being that after paying off the gongs who stopped' work yesterday, only about £4O remains in hand. This, it is estimated, will only ilist be enough to- pay for certain cleaning up. There were two additions to the fund yesterday. a sum of £7 os being handed in as the proceeds of the recent Shopkeepers’ Association and Garrison Band Concert in the Town Hall, and £6 4s 6d was sent along by the Wellington and Taranaki Sheepskin Buyers’ Association, as the result of the sale and resale several times of a skin. Only two gangs have been kept going for- some time past, and both were finally paid off yesterday, with the intimation--that work had come to an end. The thirty men at Anderson’s Bay received £BB Os :id between them, o-r an average of £2 6s 9d each. This compared . very well with the average of £1 18s 2d earned the previous week on tree .planting and other work. At Kelburne Park ten men were employed. They earned

£2l Is altogether, or an average of £2 os 3d, compared with £1 17s tho week before. The only men who are now obtaining benefit from the fund are half-a-dozen or so who will be engaged for about a week putting on the finishing touches at Anderson’s Bay and Victoria College. They are all men that are badly in need of any aid that can bo given them. The secretary (Mr. G. Willis) anticipates that the £4O "remaining in. hand will just about do what is> required, and no more. Since the fund was started about three months ago, Mr. Willis has received applications from considerably over 3000, men, who represented that they were in dire distress. Of these, however, quite 200 were .not allowed to register their names, it being found on examination for some reason or another they were not eligible. About 800 names, therefore, were actually placed' on the books, and of these 750 have been given jobs of varying duration. Some have only had a week’s/ work, while others have gone on several times, but now, as the secretary says. “We’ve got to the cleaning-up stage.”