LABOUR MARKET DULL

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6495, 15 April 1908, Page 6

LABOUR MARKET DULL

A WORKMAN'S EXPHRIBNCIES. One of the applicants for relief who received sympathetic treatment from tlio Wellington Benevolent Trustees was a stone-breaker, aged sixty-five, who, as the Rerv. W. A. Evans (chairman' remarked, did not look his years. A well-kept, respectable man, he had come down to his last half-sovereign through lack of work, and he wished to get out of tho rushing tide of competition into the quiet book-water of tho Ohiro Homo. Though deserving, ho could not be accommodated, as tho institution is full. He had been many years in New Zealand, working seventeen years for the Wellington Corporation, and earning the title of tho champion stone-breaker. When bo tried to get employment on the Gas Company's new works at Miramnr ho was told that two hundred men, most of them young fellows, had had to bo tr.rned away without a job. He had tried to get sfconenbreaking from a County Council, but tho reply was '' Full up." Mr A. W. Hogg, M.P., remarked that it was a pity so old a colonist should have to go without work when shiploads of " now chums" hardly waited a day for a job. Ho should g,> to the Labour Department, which would send him into tho country, where there was plenty of work. Mr "R. Smith made a suggestion which caused tho old man to brighten ivp. He would get him some odd jobs in the country to last while times were dull. ' , . "Will you go?" queried the chairman. " Certainly." replied the applicant, who was promised a little help to tide him over his difficulty.