RAILWAY WORKERS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1774, 7 March 1906, Page 68

RAILWAY WORKERS

MU MOORE’S CHARGES.^

THAT SHILLING A DAY.

The following additional communication has passed on this subject:— February 20th, 1906. ;Mr Moore, Kaiapoi,—The extraordinary view you take smd the standard fixed as to the conduct of a Justice of the Peace, .is amusing, as it is absurd and ridiculous, and you are evidently annoyed and chagrined at the Mayor of Kaiapoi acting with ordinary courtesy in giving me the names of the four men who were working on the railway. In your telegram you say they were got from Shim unfortunately, and to vour astonishment, and that these me\n made a statutory declaration before him in confidence. Why were these declarations made in confidence, and atwhoee instigation ? I asked you, as an honourable man, to assist me in elucidating the matter. Secret declarations, according to your ethics and standard of public morality, were obtained for the purpose of influencing public opinion, and to be used by you, and the disclosure that has followed must leave you righteously condemned in the eight of all honest men. With the clue obtained, I have been enabled, much to your discomfiture, to get the facts, especially as you stated in a previous communication that if I applied to the right officers they could give me the information. The following is the report of the General Manager of Railways regarding the payment of night allowance to railway men, and in reply to statements that have been made that the allowance has been stopped, supplied to me by the Hon the Acting-Minister for Railways from the General Manager:— Wellington, Feb. 10, 1906. With reference to the statements that have been made that night allowance was. paid to railway workmen absent from their homes for a certain period, and that the allowance had been discontinued and more particularly -in regard to the payment to Dobson and other men emSloyed on the Waipara ballast train, I ave to report that the matter has been very closely investigated, and there is no foundation whatever for the statement that the payment of night allowance has been discontinued. The facts are briefly as follows: 1. A ballast train and men were required at the end of November for the special purpose of expediting the completion of the exhibition siding at Christchurch, so that the siding could be used for conveyance of the timber necessary for the construction of the exhibition buildings. 2. The Waipara ballast train and seventeen men, including Dobson, C'apil, Drabble and Burney, who were not entitled to receive night allowance under the regulations when they were at Waipara, which was the camping ground of the ballast train, were transferred temporarily to Islington to complete the exhibition siding. 3. While so employed the seventeen men referred to were paid night allowance for the period they were at Islington and away from their headquarters engaged on the special work referred to. 4. When the special work was finished they returned to Waipara and resumed their ordinary work. The night allowance then ceased in accordance with the general practice, the men having returned to what was regarded as their headquarters. 5. The amount of night allowance due to the seventeen men referred to in respect to the period they were employed at the exhibition siding was included in paysheet for period ending December 9th, and was duly paid £o and signed for by the respective men on December 15th. 6. Thera is no foundation for the statement that the payment of Is per night night allowance to railway employees hap been discontinued, as the regulation is still In operation, and the men receive such allowance when they are absent from their headquarters. 7. The concession of night allowance formed one of the requests made by the representatives of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants at their conference in May, 1904. and to which reply was sent to the general secretary dated March 17th, 1905. Amongst other things, it stated that maintenance hands would be granted one shilling per night when absent from their homes, and sleeping accommodation would be provided wnere possible as heretofore. 8. The following statement appears on page 11 of Railway Statement laid on table of House on July 25th last:—“An increase in the lodging allowance of one shilling per night has also been granted to guards and enginemen y .when absent from home on duty, and maintenance men who have not hitherto been granted any allowance w,hen absent from home and provided with sleeping accommodation will, in future, be granted an allowance of one shilling per night, and be" provided with sleeping accommodation as heretofore/'' 9. The letter to the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the reference in the Railways Statement are conclusive proofs that the decision regarding night allowance to railway servants in the second diviwr S a if ri XS4 ®l e ven months ago, : viz., March 17th, 1905, and the request the concession was made by a aepuAmalgamated Society on .-M-ay 30fca, 1904, one year and nine months : ago, 10, T'iie decision of Cabinet as to con-

cessions was given on October 13th last, provision made in the supplementary which were placed before the House on October 30th. The instruction for payment of the

allowance was issued on November 10th, and men have received all payment to which tney were entitled in respect to the allowance.

12. The allowance is fixed by regulation, and no (alteration whatever has been made therein since November 10th last, in any part of the colony. 13. First payment of extra allowance was made on December 15th. Inquiries have been made from the district officers in charge of the Christchurch-Culver-den line and its branches, and those who have controlled the Waipara ballast train ever since it has been running, and they assert that they have never stated that the allowance was withdrawn. 14. Ganger Wellington, in charge of the ballast gang, who is responsible for booking the time of the men, states: “I was in charge of ballast gang working at Waipara at the time I received circular 3/1479, which on receipt I read to the men. I did not receive any instruction to read the circular to the men, but it is my rule to read to them any instruction affecting the staff. A few days later I received orders to proceed with gang to Islington pit to load ballast for the exhibition siding. We were at this pit for a week and two days, completing the job on December sth, 1905. The gang was off duty on December 6th. and the following day we returned to the Rangiora district, and were camped at Hawarden when I received an instruction from *he Inspector of Permanent Way that the night allowance would be paid to casual hands in ballast gangs only when they were sent away in emergency from the locality in which the train was working. I also read this to the men.’'

Ganger Wellington's statement is clear and precise in its terms, and it is very evident that he merely told the men that the night allowance was only payable to them when they were away from their headquarters. There is no foundation whatever for the statement that any officer of the department advised the men that payment of Is night allowance had been discontinued, and. as a matter of fact, it is still being-paid all men who are absent from their headquarters on duty, in accordance with the decision originally arrived at, and which has not been varied in any respect. T. RONAYNE, General Manager. From this you will now admit that the statement you made in the presence of the leader of the Opposition, which is referred to in an article in the “Lyttelton Times” of February 14-th, is incorrect. The extract from the “Times” is as follows: —

Mr Moore, speaking in the presence of the leader of the Opposition, declared that the co-operative workers on the Waipara-Cheviot Railway had been given an extra shilling a day to induce them to vote “straight” at the elections, and that when their votes had been recorded, the extra pay had been quietly withdrawn.

Probably you will deny this, but you have allowed the statement of Mr Lewis, at the Studholme banquet, as reported in the Christchurch “Press” of February 7th, to go unchallenged, which was as follows: —

What he called corruption Mr Seddon called politics. However, there was the instance given by Mr Moore at Rangiora where the co-operative workers were given an increase in wages just before the election on account, it was said, of living in tents, the increase being taken back four days after the election. If that was not corruption he -would have to get a new definition of the word, and it was only one instance out of hundreds throughout the country. Clearly, yon referred to the co-opera-tive workers on the Waipana-Cheviot railway. I immediately caused inquiry to be made, and the officers in charge of the co-operative workers denied that any such instructions had been given or pay withdrawn. You refused then to give further information. I distinctly asked yon to state whether yon had made a mistake, and to inform me whether it was the working railways or the railway construction branch where the men were employed. I asked you to give me the names of the men and the officer for the purpose, and this purpose only. You declined to do it. You over-reached yourself by getting the declarations which you are pleased to say -were made in confidence. On my courteously asking the Mayor of Kaiapod whether such declarations had been made, and to give me the names and where the men were employed, he very properly gave me the names, and declined to lend himself to what you evidently intended. Now the full facts are before the public, and prove conclusively that the statement you have made is incorrect, and that the charge made, that the camping-allowance of an extra shilling a night was done for political purposes, and when the elections were over was withdrawn, is baseless in the extreme. I again call upon you as an honourable man, and with the facts before you to withdraw the imputation wrongly cast upon the Government and the Government officials. I presume you will not dispute the facts as given by the General Manager of Railways; you will net dispute the letter being sent to the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants; you will not dispute the fact that the inception of the camping-out allowance occurred a year and nine months ago; you will not deny the assertion of the district officers in charge of the GhristchurohOulverden line and its branches, who have controlled the Waipara ballasttrain ever since it has been running, that they have never stated the allowance was withdrawn; yon will not question Ganger Wellington’s statement, which is official, honest, and straight-

forward, clear and precise; you will not dispute the fact of what took place in Parliament regarding this allowance, or that Mir Massey, your leader, on more than one occasion, and especially in an interview with the Auckland “Herald,” claimed credit, and stated that he had received communications from railway men thanking him for having assisted in obtaining this and other concessions to railway men. You must admit now that the allowance has not been withdrawn, for you are confronted and confounded with the fact that the payment of this allowance has been made to all the railway servants of the colony since, to Nov ember last, who were from headquarters, or what is known as camping-out. It is a regulation, and it is in force to-day. R. J. SEDDON.

Mr Seddon has sent the following further communication to Mr Moore, of Kaiapoi, in respect to his charge that an extra shilling a day was paid to certain railway workers for election purposes:—

I can well understand your being chagrined at the exposure of your chicanery in respect to the charges made by you against the Government. I have no doubt in my mind but that when you first heard the story you believed yourself it was in connection with co-operative work, and that the men were co-operative workmen. This conclusion is corroborated by the statement made by Mr Lewis, who said definitely that they were co-operative workmen. When Mr Wilson, officer in charge of the co-operative works on the Waipara-Cheviot railway, completely refuted the allegations, you—instead ol admitting your mistake after it had been conclusively proved that they were not co-operative men —endeavoured to cloud the issue, and positively refused to give any' information that would lead to elucidation, and would neither give the names of the workmen nor say where the men you referred ' % were employed, or how. Presuming you wished to conceal tire identity of the men, why did you not say where they were employed? As a fi rtlier proof of your knowing yourself that your charge was unfounded and unwarranted, it is only necessary to refer to your statement, “That if I applied to the officers I would get the information I required,” thus establishing the fact that you had made a mistake. But you refused to indicate what officers I could .apply to, knowing that this information would prove you in the wrong. It was only through the courtesy of the Mayor of Kaiapoi that I was enabled to obtain the facts, and this provoked your charge against the Mayor, which only a distorted imagination could construe into a breach of etiquette, especially in view of the fact that you had already published the declarations in the press, from -which you must have known that the men had been taken from the Waipara-Cheviot line to tho ballasting at Islington. Why was the place the men had been working at, the work they had been engaged on, concealed and kept out of the declaration? Surely it must have been ratent to ycu after you discovered your blunder, that the inference you tried to draw was without foundation and entirely erroneous, but you hoped to escape from the humiliating position in which you found youself by a tissue of generalities,' and by refusing to give any specific information that would elucidate the matter. It remained for me to discover the facts that ultimately refuted and disproved your baseless charge. Knowing what you must have known shortly after you niade the charge that the men were employed on the railway and entitled to camping allowance, I am reluctantly forced to conclude that you were actuated by malevolent motives. You have shown a callous disregard to the common amenities of public life due to public men that does not redound to your credit. The oharge you made that the camping allowance was withdrawn after the elections has been proved to be grossly untrue. The camping allowance, and the regulations nndei which it. is 'paid, are still in force, and the allowance has been paid since, and is being paid as the regulations direct to railway maintenance men in all parts of the colony.

Y*our last communication shows a total disregard of the facts, and such a desire for distortion that warrants me in coming to the conclusion that, having done wrong, rather than admit it in a manly way, you are endeavouring to cover your mistake by every possible cunning device. Why did you not state that the men when at Hawarden were from a railway standpoint, still at their usual headquarters? If the men had any complaint to make as to the carrying out of the regulations, one would naturally expect them to make the complaint to the officer in charge, and not allow themselves to be used for political purposes by you or any other defeated candidate. I feel that every rightthinking person must, on the whole, appreciate the wisdom of the electors of Kaiapoi in refusing to return you to Parliament, and their sound judgment and forethought has been clearly demonstrated by what has occurred. It is not unreasonable to conclude (unless you miend your ways) that your relegation to

private life is of a permanent character and in the public interest.