WHAT WAGES WILL BUY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 8

WHAT WAGES WILL BUY.

ENGLISH AND LOCAL CONDITIONS. (To tlie Editor.) Xew Zealand workers would be well advised to take passage to Britain as speedily ae possible if the information portrayed pietorially in Tuesday's '"Star'' under tlie heading "What Will Your Wages Buy?" is true. By inference, we aro : to believe that under free trade the wage-earner will be able to afford several pairs of shoes, enjoy a game of golf in -tlie afternoon, do tlie theatre in the evening in pleated evening shirt, or, alternately, sifc in a •comfortable armchair and listen to a radio broadcasting probably propaganda on free trade, which policy, incidentally, Britain herself has replaced with a 10 per cent tariff. We are asked to belief that all these luxuries, and doubtless many more Itrfes substantial, are enjoyed hv the British worker, a,> these goods nuist be ever so much cheaper in Great Britain twelve thousand shipping miles away. The Xew Zealand wage-earner, 011 the contrary, can aft'ord only one pair of shoes, and one shoe has a hole in it at that! Still, the Unemployment Board is now issuing free boots, and when the Xew Zealand wage-earner has kindly 'handed over his job to some British worker, he will receive a new pair free in return for a day's work. "At his trade?" you ask Oh, no! He has bartered his trade for a permanent job with the Unemployment Board, t'hree days a week and play golf' the other two days, probably has his own sons for caddies'. Seriously, though, if Xew Zealand workers are not to have the .opportunity to assemble together the necessary imported raw materials .(which materials, do not forget, Britain herself will also have to import), what country's workers are? And what are the workers of that country going to do for our then unemployed workers? Eat more foreign butter, perhaps. COMIfOX SENSE.