By Nigel Westmaas
How the Poor Live
“…There has been a good deal said on all sides, but personally I sympathise with all the laboring sections in the colony and my organisation as well as myself feel not alone for the sections we approached the Chamber of Commerce on behalf but also for the much underpaid clerks, who as well toil faithfully and hard for their meagre stipends, and are exposed to the same cruel, vicious nefarious and highly immoral profiteering system existing.
These are hard and indeed troublous times and when one considers the excessive profits of all the commercial organisations in the colony one feels that the State sided and other churches coupled with our Government morally stand charged for aiding and bringing about without interference the crippling of the poor hard worked laboring classes who are being hauled down the awful precipice into the chasm of penury, and utter destitution. I welcome open public opinion and am prepared to prove the just equitable and moral claims of the laboring classes.”
Very truly Yours,
Hubert Critchlow
Secretary-Treasurer BG Labour Union, 20, Regent Street
Letter to Daily Argosy, May 22, 1920