THE Marlborough Times. PUBLISHED DAILY. THURSDAY JUNE 15, 1882.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume IV, Issue 555, 15 June 1882, Page 2

THE Marlborough Times. PUBLISHED DAILY. THURSDAY JUNE 15, 1882.

WiTir ; • each succeeding session oiir ‘ New Zealand Parliament appears to become more and more-inclined to meddle with matters which are better left alone. Last session l two ambitious-efforts were made in the direction of.social legislation, and these have proved far from satisfactory, to judge from 1 ’ the indignation which has been ex-. pressed at the Gambling and Lotteries. Act, ! and the apathy, displayed by the public, in , regard to the working .of; the Licensing Act. But .there; .are npt wanting .indicr.-; tions that the present Parliament will surpass all its predecessors iii the passage of unnecessary measures. -A'reverend divine; —one Mr M. W. Green, who represents a Dunedia constituency, and whose name is itself significant of a verdant nature—is the happy parent of a measure to he known as “ The Eight Hours Act ISS2,” which, if passed, will certainty go a long 'way towards weakening the position of the working mau and retarding The progress of the Colony’.- The following is the substance of this amateur effort at legislation “ From, and after tlie "first'day of'January, ~o:ie ; thousand eight -hundred/ aiid .eighty.-three,!

the following regulations for defining and controlling the hours of labour shall take effect within the colony Eight hours out of every twenty-four hours of the legal working days of the week shall constitute a legal day’s work, and forty-eight nours a legal week’s work, in all occupations, whether those occupations be of a mental of physical nature : —All time employed in '"work done, belabour performed, in excess 1 of ' eight hours in /every twenty-four, or fotty-eight hours in every week, shall be '7ind'is hereby considered and calculated • as Overtime, and shall he paid for at the same Irate as tho ordinary hours of the legal day in the special occupation concerned, or at such'"other"rate" as may he agreed upon between employers and employes. The following persons shall bo excepted fiom tho operation of this Act: —All persons employed as domestic servants or in dairies : All persons engaged in avocations such as allow of a lesser number of hours to be worked than eight for a legal day, or fortyeight for a legal week.” Now if New Zealand were a land in which the manufaeturingjindustries constituted the main branches of labor such a measure a 3 the foregoing might not be altogether unnecessary, but unfortunately for Mr Green’s proposals it is not, nor is it likely to be for many years to -come. From the manner in which legislation of this kind will allect our own district we may form a fairly accurate opinion of the general effect it is calculated to produce upon the colony. It will he admitted that the two great interests of this Colony are the agricultural and pastoral, yet not a word was said in the Bill, as introduced, about excepting either farm or station hands from the operation, although we arc glad to see an amendment has been carried ■ exempting persons engaged in agricultural pursuits from the operation of the Act. Mr Green was probably under, the impression that there are only two classes of servants —the domestic “slavey ” and the dairymaid. It is well-known that the wages given to farm and station hands are calculated at present on the assumption that during the busiest seasons they will work longer hours' than usual, and tlie pay is averaged at so much per week for the whole year ; but if Mr Green’s Bill passes, employers will fiud themselves compelled to pay overtime'during the busy season, and we may rest assured that during the slack season the wages will be proportionally smaller, in order to cover what would otherwise be a direct loss. The working man will certainly have no cause to thank Mr Green for liis effort, and we cannot help thinking it would have been .quite as sensible an act to have brought in a proposal to regulate the price of labor as to define the hours of work. The ratis of supply to demand regulates the one quite .as much as the othrr, and it' is much- move satisfactory to leave each to be.- decided in the natural manner. To show tho thorough absurdity of such a regulation as applied to station hands wc maypoiuLout ..iiatwou.J occur during the shearing season if the proposed law is carried out. The shearers themselves are paid on piece, and to enable them to make good wages' it is necessary that they should have coustant supplies of sheep on which to operate. Tho Act does not interfere with them and they may—in most cases it is very desirable they should —work from daylight to dark. They would probably feel deeply injured if they were asked to work only eight hours per tl:.y, yet the proposed measuro would actually force them to do so, for the mustcrers would be bound by it, and unless the employers chose to pay extra the requisite number of sheep would not be forthcoming. We may rest assured that if they did pay extra wages on'this account, the money would be taken indirectly either from the shearers’ pockets or from the wages of the station hands themsclyes during the dull portion of the year. If overtime was not paid by the employer we can imagine cases in which runs would never he properly mastered, for it might be impossible to bring in the sheep iii eight hours, and if the miisterer deolined to work any longer that day he would certainly have to recommence his labors next day at the precise spot where lie began on the previous day, for the innocont sheep has an awkward habit of returning to his old haunts in a much quicker time than he can be prevailed upon to leave them for the shearing shed. The ancient fable of Sisyphus would thus be rehearsed in a modern form on almost every slieep station, tho everMescending stone being represented by the cver-retii'-niug flock. Wc wish it to be distinctly understood that in thus.alludingito,-this Bill we simply desire to point out its thorough impracticability. We are advocates of the eight hours movement in all cases where it can be. applied without'causing loss to the working man himself, but -in certain cases, such as we have indicated, the legalising of such a system >yould ,b&positively detrimental to the, interests of both the employer and the employed, for both are inseparably connected, and the; best course is to leave such matters to be regulated by the parties : concerned." 'Any legislation which attempts to interfere, wjtli the operation of the law of supply and demand—and this 1 measure has a decided ’tcudeucy' in that direction—may at once be set down as totally'uncalled for,'and likely to work serious injury-to jtbe interests it tampers withj-[-one,part of-this Bill, is especially amusing, as indicating a peculiar ignorance of its probable consequences on the part of its framer,.and.ithat is where it.states that eight hours’work shall constitute a legal day’s work in all occupations, even of a mental nature. We have no doubt this clause would prove eminently satisfactory to gentlemen of the cloth, such as the author of the Bill himself, but if we carry it it, out in regard to other, operations—newspaper offices, for. instance—we- can readily perceive the confusion . that would ar.se, and the dissatisfaction the public would '.'experience if editors and reporters were so lazy as to take advantage of the leisure which would be conferred upon them under this Act. The measure is indeed a perfect compendium of condensed laziness and impraclibility—the .effort qf r; to catch the support of the working-man

with'hollow clap-trap,'the effects of'which iu agreement with the natural laws regu lafcing labor, can onlj prove disastrous to the working-man, if the proposal is acted upon. We can, therefore, only hope that the Bill will be promptly rejected by the House.