INCREASED COST OF LIVING

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 134, 3 December 1915, Page 4

INCREASED COST OF LIVING

10 THE EDITOR. 1* seems to be forgotten when public indignation is sought to be aroused by the • unpatriotic " action of firemen, coalneavers, seamen, and other workers m striking for an increase of wages at a time like this that they are only, in selfdefence, trying to meet the enormously increased cost in living, for which there is absolutely no justification. Mr. Justice Heydon, m the Industrial Court at Sydney last week, well put it when he said the living wage, which stood at the end of 1913 at £2 Bs, had risen at/the end ', of the third quarter of 1915 tl no less ! than £3 3s, and concluded By saying that the consequences were quite past his powers of provision. Here in New Zealand the Government Statistician puts the increase in the cost of living since the war began at .37 per cent., and as he-includes in this many items' seldom used,' thereby reducing the average, it may safely be said that the increase in the cost of commodities in general use is fully 50 per cent. What else is this but a strike on a colossal - scale, deliberately and systematically organised, for the purpose of enforcing enhanced profits from the people at the bayonet ■point of their necessities? The strike of the workers for an extra shilling or two is mere child's play,in comparison, and is, as I have said, enforced by the enhanced cost of,living. Yet, while the demand of the latter—seldom, to their credit, raised since the war began—is treated as treason and denounced alike I by newspaper editors and Judges. We have the exactions of the rapacious' pirates of the merchant class, of the freezing companies, shipping rings, meat trusts, and all the extortions of the | rings and combines that' hold New Zealand from the North Cape to the Bluff lin an iron grip, . passed by -with | nonchalance or referred to as the usual result of the operation of the economic law of supply and demand. When, too, the doctors demand a 60 ncr cent, increase in their fees, and refuse to attend the sick and dying until they get it, it is not a strike ! No ; it is a '" legitimate demand caused by the increased cost of living." We reserve the word "strike" only for the vulgar worker, who has no business to ask for more, and should know his place.—l am, etc., X. Ngaio, 30th November.