WAGES IN VICTORIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4292, 22 December 1874, Page 3

WAGES IN VICTORIA.

(From the Argus,) From circumstances that have just come under our notice, we cannot help concluding that it is a very fine thing to be a plasterer in Victoria. A house is being put up by the Colonial Bank at Nagambie, to serve as a branch office ; and when the plastering wox-k was about half done, the hands had a difference of opinion with the contractor—probably on the much-vexed subject of wages—and left. For four weeks assiduous efforts were made to get men in this city to fill.their places at 15s. a day, all expenses paid and the pay to count from the morning on which they left town till the evening of the day on which they returned. Yesterday men were induced to accept one pound a day, with the extras jxxst mentioned, and there is now some reason to hope that the plastering of the bank building will by - and -by be completed, unless, indeed, the newly-engaged hands follow the example of their predecessors, and make things difficult for their employers, which is of course always possible. We commend this incident to the careful consideration of the journeyman plasterers of the old world. There must be something attractive and promising about a country in which such a thing is possible. When several years ago the question of whether a man could marry on £3OO a year was warmly discussed, it was with reference to rising professional men, army and navy officers, foreign office clerks of some standing, and the superior kinds of bank officials—now, in this country, plasterers (of whom we, of course, have nothing disrespectful to say) can earn their £3OO a year simply by going to Nagambie, leaving their children behind them, if they are so fortunate as to have any, to live upon excellent mutton at 2d. a lb., and receive excellent secular instruction without fee or reward. We should think this is a state of affairs calculated to excite feelings of envy and longing in many a European breast.