WELLINGTON'S NEW POST OFFICE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 247, 11 July 1908, Page 6

WELLINGTON'S NEW POST OFFICE.

798 and .3315. The most Important industries carried on in factories paid wages totalling £5,319,019, an increase of 10.1 per cent, over the previous year. TOO MUCH OVERTIME. ■In each of the chief centres of population there has been a grave increase in the hours of overtime worked. In no annual period previously recorded has the sum of such overtime reached .- the limit of this year's excess over wdrking hours. In the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin 733,018 hours have thus been added to..the normal time of employment. Some of! the increases willbe noted as almost phenomenal; for instance, tho men in Dunedin, who the previous year worked 107,565 hours of overtime, have during this year nearly doubled that amount in their record of 194,804 hours. It is difficult to understand tho main cause of this increase unless-we grant that there must have been a very great acceleration and accumulation of business, combined with a shortago of workers. -.Overtime work, especially for women, is an almost unmixed evil (says Mr. Tregear), as' regards tho workers themselves, even when tempered by consideration of the extra wages earned, but such operations certainly show a state of industrial prosperity, hitherto , unprecedented. FACTORY LABOUR AND THE BIRTHRATE. Dealing with the scarcity of : labour in factories, Mr. Tregear says:—"So far as I have been able to gain information, there is a real dearth of effective manual labour; but what is far more important, the Dominion itself will supply less ana less for some considerable time. This is owing , to the low bjrth-rate, and to the absence of any labour-reserve that can reinforce the depleted .ranks of tho workers as time removes them one by one through sickness, age, death, or (in the case of women) by marriage. The birth-rate fell from 41.32 per thousand in 1876-80 to only 27.08 per thousand in 1906. ,If we take the case of girls of suitable ago to work in factories we find that in New Zealand between the years 1891-96 there was an increase of 21.62 per icent. in the number of girls. between fifteen aud twenty-one years of ago. In the next five years tho increase had fallen to 6,77 per cent., and in tho fivo years ending 1906 tno rate of increase further fell to 1.26 per cent. In regard to still younger girls—thoso between fivo and ten years of age—the further want of reserve power for our labour supply is apparent. In 1881-86 there was. an increaso of girls of the ages montioned of 2-1.34 per cent.; in 1886-91 the increase fell to 1.90 per cent.; in 1891-96 there was a decrease nf 0.29 'per cent.; in 1896-1901 a decreaso of 0.10 per cent.; and in 1901-6 an increaso of 4.81 per cent. Even if this latter increase is maintained, or added to, it will take a long time to make up for the ' lean years' of the previous decade. As a concrete example, I may- point out that ijMr. Hally, the Inspector of Factories in Dun-

not done more to give the worker greater industrial security and profit. It has not, for instance, prevented any-slight increase of wages granted'by the Arbitration Court being sometimes taken advantage of ,by the employer as an excuse for .an inordinate increaso on the price of the goods the worker himself has produced, aud which he has (as consumer) to purchase. It has not prevented, in certain districts, almost the whole value of a'rise in wages being appropriated directly by an increase in the rent of the workers' dwelling, or indirectly by increase in the rents of the tradesmen with whom the workor deal's. The Act was not intonded in any way to check, or regulate the profits of the employer. or deal with the questions pf rent, land-ralues taxation, immigration," or a hundred other matters which affect the worker overy day vitally' and continuously. It was simply- an Act to promote' industrial peace, and to raise labour disputes from, the 'arbitrament of force and the' arena of bitter strife into a calmer air—into an atmosphere of judicial sense and reason, to which in the interest of civilisation all other social disputes had already been referred. If more was expected of the Act than it could possibly perform; if it was supposed to find an industrial wilderness and leave it an industrial paradise, such expectation has been disappointed, as expectations based on illusion must ever be. In the infinitely complex arrangements of modern life no legislative measure unsupported, and single-banded could possibly meet the innumerable varieties of hardship, suffering, and waste of the , world in which we have to work, nor could it at once turn-that desert- into an Arcadia."

There were in December, 1907, 121 .unions of employers, with 3630 members, and 310 unions of workers with 45,614 members. . An increase during the year of 12 employers' unions with an additional membership of 293, and an increase of 36 workers' unions, with 10.636 added members. The expenses incurred by the Court of Arbitration on the Department's vote were as follow Court of Arbitration, ,£2378 19s. lOd.; Conciliation Boards, £1696 15s. 2d.; total £-1075 15s. Tho expenses of the-Boards of Conciliation exceeded the estimate, and Mr. Tregear states that the Canterbury farmlabourers' dispute promises to be the most oxpensivo to the Govornment of any. yet dealt with by tho Boards. Ho points out that, tho proceedings might have been more expeditiously, more economically, and more systematically dealt with.

PANAMA STREET ELEVATIONS. f