SOAP TO GOVERNMENT EMPLOYES.

Evening Star, Issue 7233, 8 June 1887, Page 4

SOAP TO GOVERNMENT EMPLOYES.

TO THE EDITOR. —Your last evening’s issue contained a letter from “One Who Knows,” complaining of the hardship of a railway workshop hand having to leave Dunedin for Oamaru or to shift for himself. Why, sir, it is only what every other body has to do at the call of duty, and Government employes may thank their stars that they are not asked to do it at the*r own expense. Banks change their very highest officers at a day’s notice, and all la*ge employers of labor must reserve the right to do so, or be content to allow their business to suffer. The eternal grumbling of Government employes is becoming intolerable. A letter appeared over the signature of “J.H. in your issue of 19th ult. calling attention to the stopping of tho supply of soap to the men at the workshops, and that letter by its tone was evidently intended as a protest and complaint. I was not aware, and I daresay most of us were not aware, that a paternal Government had hitherto been supplying the article in question. Though the saving effected by discontinuing its issue may not seem very great, still it is a step in the right direction. Does it not seem monstrous that men in constant work should grumble at having to provide an article which everybody else has to obtain for himself? I am informed that the supply of “ fancy soap ” to the clerks employed in the Government Buildings at Wellington was discontinued some months since, and that common yellow soap was distributed instead. Of course the Wellington papers were full of the subject for days, and I am not sure that tho orders were not countermanded. Sir, I have been employed in largo offices where the clerks were numerous, and I know what such places may cost for soap and towels. The supplying of the office too oft' u means the supplying of some of the officers’ families, and the pieces of soap and towels (unless they are marked all over like a map) that mysteriously disappear are legion. A subscription of one penny per week, or even less, would be sufficient to keep up the supply of soap ; and then it would be properly looked after, because all would have a proprietary interest in it, and would take care not to waste it himself nor allow his fellows to steal it. If Government servants keep on growling about every little fancied hardship, they will raise such a storm that many of them will find themselves without some things far more necessary than soap. They had better keep still and be thankful, for they are the favored of this community. —I am, etc . W. A. D. X unedin, June 7.