THE REVOLT AGAINST SHIRT SLEEVES.

Grey River Argus, 30 October 1907, Page 4

THE REVOLT AGAINST SHIRT SLEEVES.

The revolt against shht-sleeves by men bears, ot cyurse, a ver>* strongresemblance to the revolt against aprons by women The "Sydney Daily Telegraph," in commenting "on the fact that fifteen hundred more or less able-bodied men had applied for fifty positions as attendants at Wonderland City, while the proprietor of the place offered three times the pay for pick and shovel workers without getting any, says that it has a significance which vjery closely concerns the future of the race. The women of the rising generation, it poiints out, will work' for the merest pittance in shops or ofrke§ rather than earn good wages at domestic 9emice, and itihe men are ready to sacrifice two-thirds of their earning power for the privilege of keeping their coats on. The same, tendencies are as pronounced here as they • are on the other side of the Tasman Sea, and shops and offices are crowded with both men eind women, while half the housewives in the country- are cowling out for "generals," and contractors and farmers are deploring the scarcity of competent workmen. A lady speaker at a recent political meeting at Sydney said that when girls were seen fixing a thousand labels on goods in a factory for one penny, rather than go to highly-paid housework it meant that ('there m,uat be a screw loose •somewhere." Her explanation 'of the peculiar circumstance was that mistresses of "households were more tyrannical towards their employees than the factory bosses. The 'Telegraph' thinks that however true this may be in the domestic helps' case, no one I wiU contend thajt the employer of a theatre-usher or other official of that kind is inclined to be more considerate of his feelings than those of the man who works in his shirt-sleeves. "What" appears," it says, "is that a shabby genteel contempt for manly toil is reducing a large section of our ykjung petqple to a state of uselessIness in a country where everything is possible to the man who is not afraid of getting corns on his hands. That ds where the screw in our social fabric is getting loose.!' Probably there is a good deal of truth in. this lametot, but vthe employers are not altogether free from bhame, and -they must improve the conditions of manual labour before they can expect to,. see it occupying the place it should in the estimation of the young people to whom it is commended.