WELLINGTON NOTES

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 7738, 18 April 1896, Page 3

WELLINGTON NOTES

for.'X OOBBKgrOKDHNS.J

There baa boon considerable comment on the distribution of the uunsys spent ia advertising in the colony. Tho tot*l sum was £7911 lα, of which the lion's share w»s distributed amoxsg thoso papers which endo&vor depict Ministers a? incorruptible statesmen, the reward beinsf in direct ratio to tho quality acii quantity of the gush, llio cumments oa tho expontiiture have baon made chiefly by that auction of our current literature which is known under the {auiurie imiiiu of tbo Vile Opposition Presu. But there is a sort of postscript to the return which has not bean mentioned. This sots forth how a further sum of £289 was disbursed to various Australian papers, oi which tV"- ** Abowcno Leader reoeived £114, and tha. £U>3. It was understood that tha object of this expenditure . was to ''advertise tho colony," as the phrase goos. Keally, it was to advertiso Ministßi'E. For instance, one of these papers had pages of illustrations of the Premier and his connections, and very full biographies of the Seddon family, their careers, and virtues. Another issue was devoted to that highly successful concern in the f«r south known as the J. G. Ward Farmers' Association, and it waa made olasaical by a partic'ilarly high-falutin.'reoord of the abilities and successful business operations of the founder, and illustrations of the great warehouse!) and offices in whioh the flourishing business was carried on. Theso flattering noticoa made tho Australians envious of the evident prosperity of this seagirt colony, and mauy of thqm hastened to our shores to i<hare in the good times we ware evidently having here. The loss of the £239 is nothing to a colony like this, which tosses about millions with so little conoern, but it meant a good deal to the poor devils who came on the strength of these quasi advertisements.

The people .who aocepted the statements in gcod faith are mostly stranded among the swaggers and unemployed, and embellish their conversation with frequent profanity oonoerning tho Government which adopted such a method of advertising their merits at their own valuations.

What with our own unemployed, who have claims, and the Australians, who must live, the Government, the Oity Council, the Belief Committee, the Charitable Aid Board, and the public generally are not given too much rest. First as to the Government. Mr Hall-Jones a few weeks ago told a deputation cf the poor and needy that his Government could give them sympathy, but if they deaired anything more substantial they hed bettar apply to the Charitable Aid Board. On the Premier's return from " devising meana of rescue " at Brunnerton, and expounding policies at hslf •α-dozeu meetings, he was interviewed by another deputation. He had to do something to counteract the Hall* Jonesian rebuff, and prepared himself for a great effort. The unemployed, although a nuisance he would have gladly evaded, have votes, and votes are daily becoming more and more neceesary to the existence ot the Ministry; So, when one of the deputation stated that he, the father of eleven children, had been refused rations by tho callous Benevolent Trustees beoause he was not able to do hard work, and had refused to carry sandwich boards at 6s per d*y to earn a living, the sympathising Seddon grasped his opportunity, and striking a melodramatic attitude, and is a voioe choked with emotion, struck his manly breast and said, " I regret that aoy one of the men who is physically unable to do hard worfc should be degraded by being asked to be a sandwich man. if I had my way, X would make a by-law to prevent sandwich men walking the street. With every sense of the responsibility of what I am saying, I would cay that it was better that a man and his children should starve than that it should be oast up at the children at a future time that their father was a sandwich man." These noble sentiments certainly have something grotesque and outre about them, as coming from the hps of a man who olaizns to be the head of the Democracy. One has always been led to believe that no honeet work is degrading. The fustian about preferring to starve and see eleven unoffending children cry for bread in prefereucß to easing five shillings a day for acting ac an advertising agent is earely the climax of playing the clown to the pit. Opinions differ, snd many pooplo would draw unfavorable conclusions regarding the relative degradation between tho carrying of tbeafcrioal announcements and keeping a grog shanty on a rowdy diggers' camp. In the one case the man wonld finish his day's work with the reflection that he had earned sustenance for his children; In the other tua chanty keoper would usually wake up in the morning with a swelled head, end require a shoe-horn to get hie hat on, while his customers would probably return home in a hilarious ooadition and thrash their wives, oe perhaps break their neoks. There are degrees in degradation, and when a Premier matree suoh spoeohes he must expeot oommects.

# * # * Tiie Relief Committee, however, is fl different sort of a hairpin altogether.' Its members act in place of blathering; but they aJso have to bear the atiDgs end arrows of critics. Foremoot among these is that glorious band of mischief inakorc, yclepi , the 'Jfradee Oounoil. Collectively they are ! not numerone; individually they ere densely ignorant of the economic problems they wneutle with and profess to aolve. That abstract fcerai. the " living wage," has had many volumes written about it, but no philosopher, no SoeialjiGijc prophet has yet been able to define it. The Wellington Trades Council Sound no difficulty about it. They said 6a per .day and that ended it. But the hard-headed business men on the Relief Committee did not Bse it; what they did see waa that if they paid ,5s per day on the relief works they would soon have Wellington inundated with all the nnemploye.3 in the colony, and their funds being limited,' they preferred to k6ep on a safe oourae. The committee ha?e courteously but distinctly snubbed the busybodiee in two replies to impertinent letters', nnd the second one wound up with a polite intimation that "this letter closes the correspondence." The Rsliof Committee have devieed a means of veiisf in another way. It is generally conceded that the laborer or his wife does not buy neeesßacisa as cheaply as they might do, and as the Benevolent Trustees have contracted with a tradesman to supply rations at a very low rate, the I iielief -'..'ommittOß hare arranged that any mas on the works «aey at hie own option take c, portion of his v/agea Jd tickets far rationa. By this syatem his cost of living will be reduced by otxe shilling per day for a family of nix. This ia equivalent to giving mm the same sum extra per day for his work. It will bo a great advantage to the men, and, not beintc compulsory, oannot very well be cavilled at, although it is more than probable that tiie Friends of the People (with a big S) will ondeavor to make out that it is an evasion of the Truck Act-

But apart from all this, the TifaSee Council i'a evidently ou its last lega. It never represented the whole or ovon a half of the trades anions, and lately has been a great filling away from grace. This was painfully evident from tho constitution o£ another deputation which waited on the Premier yesterday to suggeet a few moro Labor Bills.

There vrere representativea from half-a-dozsii unions, bat the Trades Oonnoil had no delegate there, although the leaders had just arrived froca the great law-making convention recently held at liivereargill, at which the Hon. Byphened Joceswaa asked why the co-operative workers in Southland had not been paid any wages for the pait sir weeks. The Minister did not toll them that the reafcon wan because tho Treasury w&utea evei-y shilling at tho «nd of tho nn&acial year to swell the surplus, but he promised that the payment in future should be "prompt." The fact is that the Ministry, the Ministerial morning paper, and the various political unions and conventions, are all at sixes and eevena. The re-coustruoted Ministry is saffeiing from internal couvulsions. Mr Cadman was in che sulks in Auoklacd owing , to a rating he had from headquarters ovei; hia Tβ Aroha speech. The Premier's paper has a severe tightness of the chest, and its medical advisers hold out few hopsa of its recovery. The politieul wire pullere aro in a state oi anarchy, and things are looking very blue all round.