SWEATING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10220, 14 December 1893, Page 6

SWEATING.

TO THE EDITOR. Sis,—ln reference to the letter of your correspondent “Anti-Sweater,” it is quite evident by its tenor that the writer has a grievance that requires a remedy. * We have no reason to doubt the truth of bia assertion regarding the state of affairs ia the tailoring trade, and if ho ia giving expression to the opinions of the majority ofthe journopaen of Christchurobf then

I think it would not be out of place to hint that they have a remedy in their own hands, and that ia to form themselves into a Co-operative Association to better their condition. It is quite evident that the employers are not geing to he swayed one way or tho other by letters sent to the papers. They have enjoyed monopoly so long that any curtailing would not be sgrseable. I think a change would do them no harm. They might retire and rest upon their laurels, and lot the labourers have a chance. During a strike in tho trade twenty years ago I advocated co-operation, but failed to find any response. Interested parties were opposed to it. If the scheme I have suggested could bo initiated, it would have my hearty suuDorb and sympathy.—l am, &c., ANDREW DAVIDSON.

TO THE EDITOR* Sir, Your correspondent “ AntiSweater” complains that shopkeepers are reducing wages. What else did he expect ? Did the shop assistants imagine that employers could continue paying six days’ wages for five and a half days’ work, or you may really say five days, because Thursday Is now practically destroyed for business? He also asserts that shopkeepers’ clerks are paid leas than labourers. Why not ? Of course a shop assistant or clerk is not a labourer. Ob, dear no! Nothing so common. Why should not a labourer get tho same pay, or even more, than a barber’s clerk. Fancy a sickly stripling, with more collar than brains, expecting to get higher wages for selling a packet of pins or measuring a yard of ribbon, than a man who carries on his back two-hundred-weight bags of groin over a ship’s gangway all day! It is about time this nonsense was exposed. Tho fact is we only require a few more unnatural and restrictive legislative enactments, and shop assistants and clerks will have to go to work like tho much-despisSd labourer, and allow women and children to take their places. It is gradually, but surely, coming to that, and the Shop Honrs Bill and other absurd measures are hastening it on.—l am, &c., COMMON SENSE.