A PLEA FOR THE MILKMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2403, 1 December 1877, Page 6

A PLEA FOR THE MILKMEN.

(To the Editor of the Star.)

Sir, —As your paper was always the poor man's friend, would you be kind enough to give me a small space in your independent journal ? I wish to lay before you, and the the public, the cruel and unjust law that us milkmen are suffering at the hands of those would-be gentlemen, the local magistrates—the Mount Eden and Epsom Highway Board : sNothing [less than to make us pay [5a a-head for each cow, and Is 8d for a piece of a dog-chain to put abont the cow's neck, like a strap about a dog's neck; and £1 for a strap to put about a horse's neck. This i?, Mr Editor, worse than any penal law. Allow me to inform you that, nine months' out of the twelve, there is not a blade of grass growing on this barren, black, rocky run. It is wellknown to any llman in these colonies, and every other part of the world, that there are no men in the world earn their living harder than milkmen—working, as they do, from 3 a.m. till 9 p.m., wet or dry. Yet, after all this misery, Mr Editor, they will not be allowed to live. It is a mean, low way to raise money, and rob a poor man of his hard earnings. For the last ten years it was only 2s 6d a weekfor each cow.

There is many a poor man struggling hard, with a few cows, to earn a crust for himself and family, finds himself hardly able, at the end of the month, to put a pair of boots either on himself or any of his children. —I am, etc., A MILKMAN. Epsom, November 17, 1877.