THE BACHELORS’ LAMENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1211, 17 May 1895, Page 13

THE BACHELORS’ LAMENT.

THEY PETITION THE PREMIER.

The Premier is in receipt of a petition which for pure and-unadulterated naivete simply takes the cake. It is inscribed upon good official broadsheet of a pinkish hue as “The Humble Petition of the Unmarried and Unemployed Residents in the City of Auckland.” In other words, it is the lament of the Northern bachelors. Listen to their tale of woe:—“Whereas the Government employment here offered is in its scope confined to married men, and they form but a small part of the unemployed and have credit alone in the present commercial \ community ; and whereas the' fact of men marrying without means'of‘support is a sign of improvidence and peril to any State or colony, and the consequences highly productive of destitution and crime, which the majority of the unmarried have well considered, and therefore constitute the more moderate and stable portion of the community ; and whereas work of any kind, and at any price, is not to be procured, nor intermediate temporary employment secured, thus ultimately reducing men to the alternatives of crime or beggary, or even starvation : now, therefore, your petitioners request and pi ay that for the future all Government works and employment shall be open both to the married and unmariied, and that they shall share equally in the distribution of labour, and shall receive the same wages, thus abolishing the unjust and unnecessary distinction between married and single, and allowing the opportunity of providence among the younger portion of the people, and for the future once for ever abolishing the premium on men without foresight, who commit themselves rashly to matimony, hoping for the State to find them the means of livelihood, many being known to procure the presence of their wives for the express purpose of being amenable to the bounty.” No less than 104 signatures are appended to this precious document, which is written out in fair round text, margined and paragraphed in a style suggestive of the sea or bush lawyer. The memorialists unconsciously bear testimony to the discrimination of the Department, of Labour in giving the preference when it has work to offer to the married unemployed, who may be justly presumed to be in greatest distress by reason of the wives and little children dependent upon them for subsistence. For single men are there not the gum fields and the gold mines open, even were all other avenues of employment closed ? But these Auckland bachelors who so modestly claim to be “ the more moderate and stable portion of the community,” and who refrain ' from matrimony because they have “ well considered ” the consequences of destitution and crime proceeding from improvident marriages, give themselves completely away and expose the sophistry of their reasoning by the candid admission that the married men “ form but a small part of the unemployed, and have credit alone in the present commercial community.” Splendid testimony this to the superiority of the married over the celibate state. The married man gets credit when the bachelor can procure none, and his class forms but a small part of the unemployed. The conclusion is irresistible, and we commend it to the disconsolate bachelors of the Noith : Get married at once.