IN THE PUBLIC MIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 307, 28 December 1929, Page 6

IN THE PUBLIC MIND.

WAGES o AND SICKNESS. SALARIED MAN'S ADVANTAGE (To the Editor.) >' It is not surprising that the letter about the coddling" of the wage earher has drawn ' a sharp protest from another correspondent This writer admits that lie never thought about the matter until the letter brought it to his notice. That is the trouble; so few people do think about such things. So few peo pi e with comfortable and steady incomes realise how different is the position of the man paid by the hour or the day. If he i« si<* v wages stop; there is no benevolent office to' keep Ins pay going all the time he is away If the weather is bad work may cease and lie may lose his wages. We are told that tbl worker should be able to save enough to keen him in days of adversity. How? It j s ? wonder to me that any man with a family at or near the basic wage ever saves anything ' • My own income i» far higher than this, and! though I have no vices except a desire to fret the best possible education for my child™* I find it most difficult to save. If I were down* on the £4 and £5 level I do not know what I should do. I am paid for holidays and sick ness periods; if I feel that I am getting influenza I can stay in bed without beinl worried financially. The wage earner cannot He knows that if he stays in bed" he will lose his wages. Surely this is not just. ON SALARY. PRICES. 1 ' It is a puzzle to those who are not on the commercial heights why the price which Londoners give for New Zealand produce should. regulate the price which Aucklanders are asked to pay. We may be forced to pay even more than what is called "parity." A frozen carcase • of lamb is delivered to any house in England for thirty shillings; i t the same time a householder here must pay ten shillings for a "quarter" of lamb. With butter and fruit there is ever—especially with the latter—a constant effort to keep prices at a high level. The beautiful word "competition," which is a steadier of cost of living, has almost gone out of use. lam not suggesting a remedy—l know of none, except a boycott by householders —but I write in the hope that one may > be devised. All the young boys of marriageable age I know say they cannot marry on less than eight' pounds per week, and few earn that steadily. MONEY. THE "PAID AGITATOR." Your correspondent C. Faulkner misses the point. No sane man would abolish unionist, • ' even' to get rid of the abuses that have been fastened to the system by professional agita-, tors. Mr. Faulkner guesses badly; my allegi« ance to unionism extends over thirty years. That fact enables me to be sure of my ground. My contention was (and is) that the system of open voting, imposed upon the rank and file of unionists by paid professional agitators, is robbing industrialists of the great benefits that unionism ought to bring them. I have seen men (miners) who dared to attempt to express an opinion contrary to that of the agitator boss pulled down into their seats with, threats and cuffs. I have heard , miners (so forced to vote in lodge in favour of striking) privately admit that they were on strike against their own judgment and will. I knew at least one lodge secretary who never worked more than one day a week, but whose living expenses for self, wife and four or five children could not have been less than five or six pounds a week. This man's name was on a list of "Australian Comrades" seized by the police at Arco House. Unionism in Australia is not only agitator ridden, but. there are good grounds for believing that it is being prostituted (through the system of open voting) to the insane ambitions of the ghouls who have seized Russia and defiled it: v. PATRICK PELORUS. MATRICULATION DEFENDED. Though I am an unmatrieulated student, I uphold most emphatically its worth, and the system of examinations in general, for not only does it prove a student's ability to make use of his knowledge when required, but it makes for discipline in thought and teaches those who are. desirous of getting on yet are inclined to give way to what is difficult, perseverance and singleness of purpose in the impressionable years of youth. Examination results are, of _ course, sometimes unfortunate,' even to good scholars, if ill-health, of some sort lies at the bottom of their failure'. Such candidates, how- • ever, are well in the minority and must win through by merely persevering. In cases whefe a student is clever in one branch of study, but weak in another, the difficulty is met thus: a candidate is granted a pass if the average of his marks amounts to forty-five per cent or more of the total marks possible; ne mus gain not less than thirty per cent in any sub-, ject, cxcept in English, where the minimum is rightly fixed at a higher percentage forty. Questions are sometimes set outside the syuabu's. It is reasonable to suppose that due allowance is made by the examirter on per-i ■ ceiving his mistake from the answers. . PRO-MATRICULATION.

CANCER RESEARCH. "Justice" complains re tlie cruelty inflicted on animals in the course of medical research. He does not seem to know that far more cruelty and misery is inflicted on the Impiau being. For instance, you are not allowed o work a horse with a sore shoulder, but it is within the law to work a gassed "Digger or a T.B. patient. Coal miners and others are allowed, or. rather forced, to work under conditions which in some cases bring upon them the dreaded miner's complaint. A 111 an 15 allowed to work out in the rain, while a i acehorse is not allowed to run the risk of catching a cold. Children to-day very often go to schoo barefooted, half-clothed and in some cases under-nourished. Yet it is against the law _ o starve an animal. The sacrifice of vermin, such as rats, mice, guinea pig s > which aie chiefly used in medical research, is nothing to be compared with the sacrifice of the lives of millions of men in the last Great 1 an animal is' suffering it must e put out of its misery. But a human being must suffer untold agonies until he dies. Pcop.e • like "Justice" would do the world a S lO^ el service by putting their attention to a bettei cause. If one single human life can be save by the destruction of animals 1 would saj carry on with the good work. To ''Justice it may be of some use to know that I have seen rabbits by the thousands slowly dying by phosphorus poisoning. This method o destruction usually takes about ten days, would also like to bring to his notice the imprisonment of canary birds in matchbox cages. " H.H.N. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. A NEW ZEALAND DICCER. —It would not b» fair to -reprint sudi an article with t . intention you;suggest. Because there ai® such conditions in Sydney it does not neces _ sarily follow that they exist here.