NOTES AND COMMENTS ON LABOUR QUESTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14586, 24 January 1911, Page 7

NOTES AND COMMENTS ON LABOUR QUESTIONS.

J!Y ARTISAN,

Poverty is no crime; but you can get run in for having too much of it.

The latest private bulletin received from Eotorua anent- my friend, J. K. Kneen :—

Under the action of the baths, improving slowly."

The Amalgamated Engineers, at their last meeting, expressed their disgust at the award which came into operation on the 3rd inst. Half tho employers cited have been left out, which is unfair to the employers left in, as it is to the employees.

I learn that the Shearers' Union and others, amounting in the aggregate to 55 votes, declined to exercise their votes in the election of workers' representative on the Arbitration Court. This is indicative of a growing sense of uselessness of a representative on the Court, if not of the Court itself.

The appeal made by the Auckland Trades Hall trustees for gift or loan of £300, that they might proceed with the erection of the building, has met with generous response from, three or four unions. No doubt, after the first meetings following the holidays, more of a similar character will be to hand.

No matter how far science and invention have tended towards solving the problem of the production of wealth, its equitable distribution yet lies buried in the womb of Time, awaiting solution. To hopo for its solution by parsons, or professors, or even all-knowing editors, is but " hoping against hope." The ultimate solution lies with the workers themselves.

The American Census Bureau gives some statistics concerning railwavmen. The figures show they are less liable to consumption, less apt to commit suicide than any other wage-earners, suffer less from rheumatism and fever, nervous system and heart excellent, and less subject to pneumonia than any other worker. Moral : Let us all go and work on the railway.

11l families where all have to make some sacrifices, it is the mother who makes the most. Poor and working mothers are the most unselfish in the world. It is they who wear broken boots longest, shabbiest hat, and starve themselves on weak tea and bread, so that the husband and children shall be fed. How divine is unselfish motherhood and wifehood ! And how dreadful that the world should crucify them as it does to-day !

In Berlin they have a corps of women bill posters and also a staff of " messenger girls." They wear uniforms and ride bicycles, and can actually hurry with an urgent telegram. They are also qualified cooks, and will come in and cook a dinner at an hour's notice. We need something like that here. It would relieve many a domestic crisis, and save many an overdone servant from collapse when the mistress had a dinner party on.

The Lascar question, in which the Seamen's Union is interested, is being well aired. It is to be hoped that the claim of Australia and New Zealand, for a stamp duty of 25 per cent, on passengers' tickets and bills of lading, issued with, respect to any vessel trading between New Zealand and Australia on which Asiatics are employed, will be pressed upon the Home authorities, as one upon which it is inadvisable to exercise the veto.

We are within coo-ee of the municipal elections, and no sound recorded that there is to be even one candidate put forward from the ranks of Labour. As workers' political organisations are practically defunct in Auckland, will the Trades and Labour Council not take the matter in hand at once, and not delay to within a week 01* two of the time of election, then, as has been done before, make a mad, -organised rush?

Labour was well represented at the civic reception tendered by His Worship the Mayor (Mr. Bagriall) to Mr. Hodge, the British M.P. The chairman of r the Harbour Board, with his usual kindness, gave our illustrious guest the use of the Board's launch for a trip round the harbour, and on the last day of his visit he ( was " motored" by - a section of the " unwashed" to the top of Mount Eden, so that he might not depart without looking upon the world's premier views.

On Saturday last I was in Messrs. Leyland and O'Brien's office talking to the former gentleman, when a clerk came in with several papers to receive his signature, the clerk naming the nature of each as he laid them on the table. One, " £275 bonus to workmen," no doubt extracted from me an unconscious, look of interest, if not of astonishment. Seeing this, Mr. Ley land showed me the account, with the remark, "It is the firm's custom." Yet, with a moment's thought, there was really no cause to be astonished, for it was quite in accord with the traditions of the firm, which stands out in pre-eminent degree for kindly, generous treatment of its employees.

At the recent Labour Conference, to consider the report of the Royal Commission of the Poor Law in England, sworn evidence was given that "babies, three or four years old, were carding hooks and eyes until nine o'clock at night, in order to assist the miserable wages paid to their mothers." "I have seen," said a witness before the same conference, " the little linen work girls in Belfast trudging in scores to and from the mills on a raw October night, or cold wet morning, barefooted, with flimsy shawls covering their ill-nourished bodies, and I can hear now the ' slap-slop' of their tender feet on tho wet flags. In Lancashire it is the pittlepattle of little clogs you hear instead.'

" The woman-servant in France," says a writer in the Revue, " is more alive than anywhere else in the world, except perhaps Australia and New Zealand. [V\hat about the British suffragette?] What a change since the days of \ oltaire, \\ ho said,' " Ideas only accompany beards. And the Abbo Choisi called the Duchess of Fontanges " a perfect woman, beautiful as an —and silly as a goose. _ And that ponderous German, Lessmg, said, A woman who thinks is ridiculous, like a man who puts on rouge." Whereas now, eavs the Revue, the adherents of feminism are recruited not only from the ranks of labour, but from among the new-made rich and even from licit sacrcd citadel 01 tho old regime, the Faubourg Saint Germain. _______________