LABOUR IN POWER.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1911, Page 8

LABOUR IN POWER.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AT BROKEN HTLL. A sturdy advocate of Labour having a share in civic government is Mr. Jabez Wright, of Broken Hill, a- prominent trades unionist, who is spending a holiday in New Zealanad. Mr. Wright related to a Post representative to-day how in the "Broken Hill of 1900 there was the greatest possible dissatisfaction with the conduct of municipal affairs there. There was practically no control of municipal utilities. The Labour Party agitated and worked until it achieved a majority in the City Council there. In 1900 the wages of corporation labourers were 7s 6d and 10s a day, according to the nature of the work. At the present time, through the influence of the Labour element in the council, wages have been raised to 9s 6d and 12s 6d a day respectively. Labour has also served the public in the building of no fewer than five municipal rotundas with plots of grass around them — a great thing in the torrid climate of Broken Hill. .Contract work was abolished and day labour substituted — and all this on the basis of a property qualification municipal franchise. There were also municipal electricity and municipal abattoirs. In 1900 a man might have as many as eight votes, according to the -position of the property he owned. Now, it was one ratepayer one vote. Rating on unimproved value had been substituted for the ordinary system of rating, and the present rate was 7gd in the £1. Water was supplied to Broken Hill by a private company at 5s per 1000 gallons, but the Government was arranging to build a reservoir and furnish a supply at about Is 6d per 1000 gallons. Such was the work of a Labour Mayor with a Labour council in a town of 30,000 inhabitants.