LAUNDRY LABOR.

NZ Truth, Issue 80, 29 December 1906, Page 5

LAUNDRY LABOR.

AN ABSURD ANOMALY. Chows Work Night and Day, but I Whites Hampered m Every Way. •'-.We arc twenty years ahead oi other countries as regards our legislation!" proudly boasts the banracker.. foi. "God's Own Country." So we me m very many ways r r and it's a good thing for the working man and woman, lor there arc any number of 'Faimcn m this tight liltle three-is^ lan.l colony who would iatten some more on sweated labor did the law permit. But New Zealand is still a ion :\. long way from the Utopian state, ier there are innumerable ways m which the labor laws could be improved. ' . '

Probably the most absurd anomaly of the lot is tlie rules and regulations governing the laundries .of ihe colonies— those laundries, that is, owned and run by white people. The other kind, the. filthy, disease-<germ-infested, tumble-down ' shanties, conducted by pestiferous, pigtail Chows, where misguided folk send their linen under ...._. -fond delusion, that it will be "ciean&d,"' don't seem to have any rules and regulations worth the name. These horrible dens - have latterly sprung up with mushroom growth, m all the large centres, and the cry is "still they come." The slifreyed gentleman .who bosses one .of these slimy shows feet's' tb wprlr just 'as he likes, seemingly.. jCertaihly'he^' is subject to have his -puny, pukey premises inspected, but the inspection seems to be carried out. m most slipshod, slovenly style, or many of the .soap-sud styes now extant would have been closed, by order, long since. In the rare evdftjL of a factory inspector blowing m to' one of these places, he might just as well, for all the good he does, stay away. The bland and urbane John, it appears, employs no one to do his work. That nuserable-looking specimen of a CeleJstial standing at the board ironing a shirt and damping it with a spray from his leprous mouth, is, it seems, the proprietor's cousin, and a partner m the business, to boot. Another lousy, looking lump of yellow skin, washing away for dear life : "Him my nephew, he partner, too !" They are all partners, every mpther's son of them. So the factory inspector steps outside, for he can do nothing ; nobody works for the Chows ;, it' is one big partnership. Consequently the Celestial laundryman can work 14, IG-, 18 hours, all nip*lit if it /pleaseth him so to do, and the honest, noble-hearted workman, who is protected by the Arbitration Court m $very way, can call for his shirts - at 8 o'clock or' 10 o'clock any -evending. m the week, or •oh Sunday morning, if 'indisposition' or any ' other cause has delayed him on the previous evening.. And to his unutterable shame he .does it, .-Jjoo L like the hulking fraud buys his tobacco—for .the sake of a box of matches thrown m. .

; What a difference with the white man who opens a laundry m this labor-loving land. The Factory In* spector, when he gets wind of what is happening, waltzes across the doorstep and wants to know, things. The intrepid white washer has to allow so many cubic feet of space for each worker he employs ; he has to whitewash the walls of his factory ; he has to provide a dining room for the employees ;. finally, .no hands must be on the premises before 8 a.m.. or after 5, p.m. .*....'■

If the European laundry fulfils all these and a few dozep other minor re(jjUirements, well and good. If not the proprietor is hauled before the beak, fined, and held up as. a dreadful example of the sweating Faitman. The anomaly between conditions ruling m the several conduct of Chow, and white laundries would be ludicrous were it not ,. so grossly, abominably unfair and a shame and slur upon our legal administration.

Of cpurse no one wants the stringent laws pertaining to the employment ot laundry hands* relaxed, more especially as those chiefly influenced are girls and women. But m the name of air that is fair and just let the Government get a move on and so amend the Factories Act as to bring all. Chinese laundries under the same restrictions as apply to ordinary laundries where white girls and women cam their daily bread. At the present time the soulless, sordid, slip-shod, slit-eyed Chow ' has it all his own wav a.nd fattens unfettered, whilst the white laundryman has -to keep strictly to the law of the land, and make the best'he oan of a bad job.