THE REVOLT AGAINST SHIRTSLEEVES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 267, 12 November 1907, Page 3

THE REVOLT AGAINST SHIRTSLEEVES.

The revolt against shirt-sleeves by men bears, of course, a very strong resemblance to the revolt against aprons by women. The Sydney Daily Telegraph, in commenting on the fact that fifteen hundred more or less ablebodied men had applied for fifty positions as attendants at Wonderland City, while the proprietor of the place offered three times the pay for pick and shovel workers without getting any, says that it has a significance which very closely concerns the future of the race. The women of the rising generation, it points out, will work for the merest pittance in shops or offices rather than earn good wages at domestic service, and the men are ready to sacrifice two-thirds of their earning power for the privilege of keeping their coats on. The same tendencies are as pronounced here as they are on the other side of the Tasman Sea, and shops and offices are crowded with both men and women, while half the housewives in the country are calling out for "generals," and contractors and farmers are deploring the scarcity of competent workmen. A lady speaker at a recent political^ meeting in Sydney said that when girls were fixing a thousand labels on goods in a factory for one penny rather than go to highly-paid housework it meant that "there must be a screw loose somewhere." Her explanation of the peculiar circumstance was that mistresses of households were more tyrp.nical towards their employees than factor;/ bosses. The Telegraph thinks that' however true this may be in the domestic helps' case, no one will contend that the employer of a theatre-usher or other official of that kind is inclined to be more considerate of his feelings than those of the man who works; in his shirt-sleeves. ""What appears," it says, "is that a shabby genteel contempt for manly toil is reducing a

large section of our young people to a state of usefulness in a country where everything is possible to the man who is not afraid of getting corns on his hands. That is where the screw in our social fabric is getting loose." Probably there is a good deal of truth in this lament, but the employers are not altogether free from blame, and they must improve the conditions of manual labour before they can expect to see it occupying the place it should in the estimation of the young people to whom it is commended.