CORRESPONDENCE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 154, 18 October 1876, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[We wish it to be most distinctly understood that w» are not responsible for the opinions expressed by our correspondents. J

SHEARERS AND SQUATTERS, TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENINO MAIL. Sib, —Seeing a letter signed " Work and Wages" in your paper of the 16th inst. He says the fall in the price of wool is sufficient to cause a reduction in the price of shearing this year. When squatters were giving 30s. per 100, their runs were not half stocked, and they were under nearly as much expense as they, are now, so that they are better able to afford to give 30s. now than they were fifteen years ago. He says that 16s. 6d., with food and lodging, is a great inducement

for shearers to go shearing. I would like "Work and Wages" had given" usa de-< ? scription of the board and lodging. Just imagine about twenty shearers and about the same number of other hands, all sleep- v ing and eating in the same place, about 12tt. by 30ft., after perspiring so freely all day that I have seen all round wher<T,|»afstood quite wet with sweat. They start at from half-past five to six a. in., and knock oif at six p.m., and [ have seen many of them so tired that the could scarcely walk:;, to the hut in the evening. The run of shearers cannot shear 100 per <J|F and then they lose about-two da#s/£ud a-half in the week through wet weather. When they pay for shears, stone, and oil, and pay their expenses to and from the. place they have been shearing, and the" time they lose before they settle down to regular work again : when they deduct the above from their shearing cheque, they ,) will find that they are about as rioh as rf t.iey never had gone shearing. He says that the proverbial prodigality of shearer* | is the great reason of the combination for an extortionate labor tariff. If we were depending on those who spend their hardearned money in the first public-house to keep up the price of shearing, we would have to take what would be offered to us.' j With regard to the men they keep employed, one good farm would give employment to as many men as all the squatfcert on the Waitaki do in the winter time, As for the Oainese affair, I do not think it will be swallowed. I do not beliew there are fifty Chinamen that could shear sixty sheep per day from the Gulf of Car' pentaria to Cape Howe. A few years ago there was not a dozen. I may tell "Work? and Wages" that we do not want the sympathy of such as he, neither dojire want his adviqe, and 1 am sure *fy' squatters will not thank him for blowing their whistle. He is just like what the country is over-stocked with at the present time—that is, he knows a good deal' about wages, and very little about work,— < I am, &c., Sheakbk,