The appeal is signed by the Mayor, two members of Parliament, and the president of the Trades and Labour Council.
What is required is that temporary work shall be provided for a few hundred men whose regular employers have no use for their services at the present time.
There are, we are informed, between five and six hundred unemployed in Dunedin just now.
Of these probably one-half are connected in one way or another with the building trade.
The probability is that this particular trade will be exceedingly busy in a few weeks', or, at the most, in a few months', time when several important contracts have been put in hand; but it is the most depressed trade of all at this moment.
The rest of the unemployed are drawn from many other trades.
The suggestion that has been made is that citizens, desirous of helping the unemployed over a trying month or two, should have such odd jobs as they may have in contemplation executed at the present time in order that the labour which is available may be absorbed in a legitimate way.
We commend the suggestion to the notice of the comfortably-placed members of the community in the hope that its adoption may obviate the need for the establishment in Dunedin of anything in the shape of relief works.
• Seven persons - four factory girls and three male workers - appeared at the Police Court yesterday on charges of failing to quit a railway carriage at Burnside and travelling on to Abbotsford, a mile further on, without paying the extra fare.
All the defendants pleaded "Guilty", and Mr Macassey, who appeared for the department, stated that a practice was growing up whereby persons purchased tickets from Dunedin to Burnside and travelled on such tickets to Abbotsford. - ODT, 13.7.1909.
