CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 4 March 1914, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

SHAREMILKERS' COMPLAINTS

To the Editor

Sir, —At a certain date I let my employer have a bag and a half of seed potatoes to plant alongside the few he planted for himself; he then said we could "go whacks" in them. My two boys helped plant them. Some time ago my wife and eldest boy went over to get a few for dinner, as the few that we had in the garden were finished. My wife said to him, "I am going; over to get some of our potatoes/ He then said, "If you take any of them, you will fall in." That same day. when she went to have a look at the potatoes, there were his cows on them, and were on them for several days after. What would you call a man like that?

Later on the married man that was working for him gave him a month's notice. He wanted to get away before Christmas. The boss did not have another man. He then begged of this man to stay until he could get another man. He did stay about another month. In the meantime he had written to a house agent, and he got a house for which he sent a month's rent in advance. At the time he got away that man's rent was all used up. This man would stay no longer, so he left on a Friday. Had he stayed until the Saturday he would have made a full week. As it was, he did not. When the boss gave him his cheque he deducted a dayjs wages off it. After the man stopping a month to oblige the boss, and paying a month's house rent out of his own pocket, the boss should have paid it for him if he had been anything like a* man. Such men as he snould be sent to some desert island.

In another instance the boss told the shaiemilker and his family that they had: milked the cows that morning, he (the boss) would take charge of them and milk them himself in the evening,; As a lot of people term it—he gave the poor sharemilker the "bullet** without a moment's notice.

Again, when a sharemilker went to •take possession, he and his family found the house in such a dirty, filthy state that the two gentlemen who brought the family and furniture to the place would not allow them to put either furniture or family into it; ihe smell of it was something like a barn that had been infested with Maori bugs and rats for twelve months. Such a state as the house was in was never witnessed by those two gentlemen before or after. This will show what some poor hard-working families have to put up with, even in what is called God's Own Country. I would like to state her© that I do not think there is more than a very small percentage of employers so devoid of consideration for others as the man alluded to here. I have a family of seven children to provide for, the eldest about fourteen, and we are all huddled up in a small house of four small rooms; the outside measurement of the house is 20ft. by 20ft. .Part of it is not even rough-lined, and when it rains and blows a little- there is not a dry room in the house. When I took this job I had to buy a horse &nd a set of new harness and a new spring dray to cart the milk to the I factory, and there is not a shed onj the place. My new harness has to hang out in all sorts of weather, unless I take it. in and put it under some of the beds. We have even to cart water for the house, as there i 6 only a very small piece of spouting on the house. I hope the next sharemilker that takes this job will have things in better form than I have had. I have been in New Zealand over forty years, and have never been treated like this by any employer, not even by a Chinaman.

Now, sir, in conclusion, I would like if some of my brother workers would take this matter up—some that have a better education than I, and are more able to explain the ills that are dealt out to the poor working men and women of New Zealand by those ■ who have no' conscience.

SHAREMILKER