The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, July 26, 1887. UNJUSTIFIABLE ECONOMY.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 19, 26 July 1887, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, July 26, 1887. UNJUSTIFIABLE ECONOMY.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at bo thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

We should be failing in our duty as public critics were we not to protest in the most vigorous terms against the decision arrived at by the Cook County Council on Thursday last re the price to be paid for day labour. The Council decided to reduce the wages for day labour from eight to seven shillings a day. We have no hesitation whatever in denouncing this reduction as a cruelly unjust and unfair, and, not to mince matters, an absolutely iniquitous one. To argue that because wages have come down in town, the wages of these country labourers employed by the Council should also be reduced, is as illogical as it is disingenuous. Why these day labourers, who are now so ruthlessly deprived of six shillings a week, are men who have to do the most arduous of work under the most uncomfortable of conditions. Everyone who knows anything of these men and their work knows what that work is. Up to their knees in mud and wet, having frequently to ride many miles to and from their work, and therefore obliged to keep horses, toiling far away from the comforts and privileges of town life, they well deserve every penny of the eight shillings a day they earned before the Council cut them down.

Retrenchment is all very well, and we would be the last to protest against necessary economy, but this reduction will assuredly result in a-loss to the Council and to the ratepayers. At present the men employed are a fine body of picked labourers, who do good work for their money, but if this reduction be not rescinded, the best men will get disheartened and leave, or even if they do not leave, the quality of the work will suffer. Everything they use —their stores, their clothing, and all the ordinary necessaries of life, cost far more than if they were in or near town, and to expect them to work at town rates is a manifest injustice. We sincerely hope that one of the three Councillors who had the courage to oppose this monstrous piece of meanness will move at the next meeting of the Council that the resolution be rescinded, and that the men receive, as heretofore, the reasonable and just wages of eight shillings a day. For the benefit of the working men, we here give the names ol those who voted for and against the resolution.

For the reduction were Councillors King (the mover), Gray, Chambers, and the Chairman. Against the reduction— Councillors Wallace, Gannon, and Stubbs. Councillor J. W. Sunderland was absent from the room at the time. We would as!< all those who like to see working men get a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work, to use all means in their power to induce a reconsideration of the reduction, with the view of getting the old rate reinstated. A more absurd and unfair example of retrenchment run rabid, we have not heard of for a long time.