COST OF LIVING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6315, 16 September 1907, Page 3

COST OF LIVING.

■ ■ BEFUSAL TO BAISE WAGES. Mr Justice Hoad, sitting as a Court of Industrial , Appeal at Melbourne last week, allowed the appeal of ,the employers in tlio bakery trade against a decision of the Wages Board in increasing workmen's, rates of pay from Is -Id per hour, or 50s per week, to Is lid per hour, or 54s per week of <lB hours, in giving , j udgment, .he said that the contention that the cost of living; had increased was the real point of the case. If there were an extra cost on the necessaries of life, the question at once .arose, Who was to bear the burden? Where .a. .worker was receiving merely a living wage, or where the wage was a minimum one, all would agree that the burden must go on the employer. But the general rise in the cost df living, followed by a corresponding rise in all wages, would mean a further rise in prices, with an additional advance in wages to follow, and so the matter would go on ,ad infinitum. Difficult as the matter was, it -was now made more complex by the tariff. Alterations, if, any, made by the tariff did not seem to him to,' be reasonably permanent, and it did not yet sufficiently appear that any alteration - in prices had been caused, or that if so caused it would continue. The tariff, in its present form, nad only been enforced for three weeks. If he raised. wages on any conjectural effect of a conjectural tariff, he would have to lower them again should his conjecture. prove erroneous. In past years, however, so far as one could judge from statistics, it would appear that on the whole the cost of living 'in Victoria had steadily decreased. Considering the grounds on .which tho increase was asked for, tho ; decision would apply to upwards of 67,000 -employees under the factories Acts, and such an all-round increase of wages would affect the whole community. If wages were raised in the bakers’ trade because the cost of living had increased, wages in any other trade must also, on the same ground, be augmented. He did not say that the employees had not a good case, but, if they had, they had signally failed to prove it.' The only duty of the Court was to interpret certain important' Acts of Parliament; it was never intended that alterations of. any sort should be made in industrial conditions without satisfactory proof of the existence of some evil, or that changes should be made out of mere benevolence or upon conjecture founded mainly on hearsay or rumour. Wages were ordered to be at the rate of Is Id per hour.