Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1920. WORK, WAGES, PRICES

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 121, 22 May 1920, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1920. WORK, WAGES, PRICES

Tuesday's issue of The Post contained some remarkable statements concerning work and wagps in the Old Country, as well as in New Zealand. . Messrs. Ross and Glendining's representative in England, Mr. G. S. Amos, of Wellington, saw in a Nottingham hosiery factory young girls, with their hair down their backs, earning £3 15s per week ; and, "in the malting of departments," men averaging. between £9 and £10 per week. In the same issue was reported the appearance in the Wellington Magistrate's Court, summoned for debt, of a, wharf labourer who admitted that his average earnings were £6 14s a week. (This man's indebtedness may be a case of pure misfortune, since it appeared that he had four young children and a sick wife; but the figure of his earnings serves as a casual illustration, if not an index, of the advance in the reward of unskilled labour.) At.the same time, the same issue of Ths Post records a complaint by the Taranaki Herald concerning the delay of transhipment cargo in Wellington, in the course of which the Herald says : ' '

The excuss offered is shortage of labour in Wellington. One has only to visit the wharves there occasionally to bo convinced that this is not the real reason. There is ample labour if tho men would "put their backs into tho work." We have never seen anything- worse than the doHboraLO "loafing" through the work that may bo £2on any-day there.

With certain exceptions, the payment of more money for less work has come to bo regarded as a po^i-war commonplace. Nor :g this phenomenon ••'confined to time-payrueni. According to Mr. Amos, even payment by results- doe 3 not produce maximum work, for piecework prices are so high that "the workers c~a\ earn a good living without doing the same amount of work."

The other tide of the picture is touched on in another column of The Post —the same issue—by Mr. W. T Strand, of the Hufct, v/ho, as a man who earns his living from the soil, advocates that the Imperial Government's "commandeer" should be replaced by a New Zealand Governmental "commandeer" of the whole of. the country's produce, with a' view io making in the. oversea, mar-kets^-a profit that would be devoted partly to keeping down produce prices in New Zealand, and partly to liquidation of the wsr debt. The central fact of the situation is that New Zealand, a country of plentiful food production, is, and has been, in a position to make money out of the countries where there is a. dearth. While the war was-in progress, the policy was enunciated that New Zealand producers should-not make the utmost farthing—the extreme profit obtainable in open competition on supply and demand lines —out of either the British consumer or the New Zealand consumer. Jn 'the interests (it was hoped) of the former, the Imperial 'Government was encouraged to commandeer New Zealand 1 produce nt a price considerably, below the price obtainable competitively j and in the interests of the latter, butter was sold in New Zealand at leas than the English price) the

suppliers at the lower price being compensated out of a levy o:i exported butter-fat. At. a very early stage, protest by the. farmers knocked out the butter-fat levy, and transferred the burden of compensating the lower price suppliers from the butter-fat industry to the Consolidated Fund; in other words, the New Zealand price was kept down ■*by Government subsidy .instead of by levy on the interested industry. As to the concession made to the British consumer, fanners complain that as a rule it did not reach him; that it was lost by the bad management of the Imperial authorities, or became a profit in their possession, the destination of which is unsettled; and that other producing countries, New Zealand's rivals, were allowed to take greater advantage of the British market. •

The upshot is the demand of the farmers for a free market; that-is, for nonrenewal of the abowt-to-expire Imperial "commandeer," and for a return to open competition on supply and. demand lines. "Let us," say the fanners in effelt, "make the biggest profit we can out of the countries of dearth, and let us Ueep it for ourselves. When handling our goods, the wharf labourer extorts the utmost money and gives the least work. The British woollen trade, buys our wool at a price that bears almost no relation to the price we have to pay when the wool come? back to us as clothing ;■ the difference goes in manufacturer's profit, in big wages for small work, shipping profits, etc. Everybody is profiteering, and as we have to pay our share of increased wages and prices, let us make the most we can in the world market, and let us sell on the same terms in the New Zealand market, conceding, nothing." But at this stage along comes Mr. Strand, himself a man of the land, "with his proposal for another commandeer, by New Zealand for New Zealanders, in the interest of the New Zealand cost of living and reduction of New Zealand's debt. Pay the New Zealand farmer a reasonable price, says Mr. Strand; charge the New Zealand consume* a reasonable price; and (this part by inference, since Mr. Strand is silent on the point) charge the oversea consumer -what you can get. As to what is a reasonable price—well, the farmer • should get "certainly not more than, but perhaps less than, what he is getting." It should be added, however, that Mr. Strand does not confine his attention to his fellow farmers. He proposes close inquiries into the profits of large clothing, woollen, and produce companies, and other concerns that manufacture or import largely. And, after pointing to the sacrifice of warservice, he tells the home-staying public that it is not unreasonable that "we, who have prospered and enjoyed our home comforts, should be called upon to give at least five years' service to help to bring things back to normal."

This article has been inspired by the ■ appearance, in one issue. o£ • one newspaper, of four or five apparently' disconnected articles and items of news; which, when connected up, fit into one pattern, and 'serve to 'faintly outline a social-economic figure of vast complexity. Tuesday's issue was selected at random. Almost any newspaper nowadays supplies similar material, because economic conditions are now fluid instead of static; and it rests upon the wit and character of man to run them, in their plastic state, into new moulds that shall.prcduce equitable and enduring results, or into moulds that, when the material cools, will b© revealed as misfits. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the burder that ia v thus placed upon the wisdom of the Government and Parliament and upon the unselfishness of all classes of the community. Will society bear, or will it shirk, its load? Will capital and labour approach each other in a spirit of reciprocity and lay the foundations of the ii©w age on a basis of co-operation? Or will everybody simply go on grabbing for himself? The time to answer these questions is not next year but now. For by next year the process of re-crystallisation, which does not wait upon conferences or Ministers or Cabinet rearrangements, may have advanced too far, and an invaluable formative opportunity may have been lost for ever.