SWEATED MILKMEN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 6 September 1913, Page 12

SWEATED MILKMEN.

Classes of workers of whose life the public has hitherto known nothing, are now haying their grievances aired. Recently the bakers of London secured better treatment after, some disturbing revelations had been made about their conditions of work. ■ Now the Sunday Alliance is taking up the case of the London milkman, a necessary part of the community, but one on which little or no thought has been besto\yed, save in the way of business. In London there arc 100,000 men who take milk round to houses, and their hours arevery long, their work tiring, and their wages low. They work seven days in the week, and it is said their average wage is less than 20s a week. The London milkman, who is generally a man with a family, makes three deliveries on week days, and two on Sundays. He does not drive a cart, but pushes up and dowu hill a hand-truck which carries a large milk can and a number of smaller ones. Under ■ the» Weekly Rest Day Bill, which the Sunday Alliance is trying to get passed through Parliament, it is proposed that it be illegal to deliver nr'lk after half-past ten in the morning on Sundays. This would give milkmen two-thirds of the day off, whereas at present they have to work about three T quarters of an ordinary working day on Sundays. A clergyman who is interested in the Bill remarked that if the public could be got to realise the men's grievances in this and other trades, such abuses would disappear, lhat an understanding public is sympathetic is shown by the result of a poll taken by the Lord's Day Association at Harlsey, nfc which 8520 people voted against y two deliveries on Sundays, and only 70 for them. "The ambition of a milkman at present is to be promoted to the position of carter, where he may command the salary of 22s to 2os per week, and that" for seven days of toil" (says the Daily News). "Comparatively few reach the maximum; the lowest is generally the average. There are thousands of others who scarcely ever have had a sovereign to draw." ,