WORK AND WAGES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIX, Issue 9985, 14 March 1893, Page 5

WORK AND WAGES.

[Special to Pkess Association/) ROME, March 12. Replying to a question in the Chamber oi: Deputies, Admiral Brin, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Marine, said it was unlikely that the Australian Cabinets would, listen to the demands of the Unions in regard to legislation which was hostile to Italian workmen in the Colonies, and added that, if the occasion arose, Italy would endeavour to assort her rights in the matter. A eminent American railway official once declared that the railway workers could, iu tho event of a serious Labour crisis, block all the American railways within twenty-four hours. It must be supposed, says a Some paper, that the Pennsylvania Railway is apprehending some such contingency, as it is reported to be dismissing all of its employees who are members of any Labour Union. It is said, too, that other railways will follow this example, and that, in snort, we may expact a general war on Labour declared by the railwaymagnates of America. IVe venture to think that such & course is more likely to precipitate than to avert the crisis feared. It is a violent, arbitrary, revolutionary net, which no free people can possibly tolerate. The “ railroad Icings ” are the beat friends of the movement, now growing to immense proportions in the United States, for ending the reign of these potentates hy public control and acquisition of the railway system. The returns for December issued by the Labour correspondent of the Board of Trade are the worst for the year. They are worse than they were even in 1887, that year of uubapp.y memories. There are, w-y* a Home paper, twenty-three Trade Uino’-s which send ia tep-iria r-iruiaMy, arid 28,458 members out of 279,tffil are reported this mouth to be out of work. The army of the workless has thus drawn within the month 5847 men from the ranks

of skilled labour. The unemployed Union, iats are now 10‘2 per cent of the employedand yet in the dismal clays of 1887 their percentage was only B's. Work ie harder to get in the shipbuilding and engineering industries. Twice as many men are out of work in the building trade as were unemployed at this time last year. The printers are the only people who have nothing to complain, of. Coal miners are not included in the general percentage, because they do not suffer as others do from dull trade. They go ou snort time, and are therefore nob actually out of work.