The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 1914.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 47

The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 1914.) THE WEEK.

** Kunqoam altnd Ditnrftj ellud iftplsoAift fllsii.- 1 -** JOTBITAIj. . . . ~ “ Good nature and feed aaaae muet erer J«!a. —• Pom. It 'would seem that the wharfsido

Intermittent Labour.

employers at W ellingtou have hit upon a method of employing labour which will, at the same time, en-

sure permanency of employment for the men and secure the employers from the risk of a paralysis of trade at any moment when a fiery cloud of mutiny passes across the industrial horizon. As a means of adjusting the wrongs that labour may suffer from, a strike is just about as sane as tho action of a tenant setting fire to his house because the landlord is charging him too much rent. If the conditions of labour were anything approaching such as those depicted by Maxim Gorky in “Comrades,” it would not be difficult to understand why human nature, brutalised by oppression, should turn blindly, and desperately rend anyone or anything, as a dog in the madness of hydrophobia snaps at' everything. Most of the industrial troubles in New Zealand, and, for that matter, in Australia, have been begotten of the intermittency of labour. _ The men who follow an intermittent calling are not cast in the same mould as those who, year in and year out, are content with the regularity of conditions and employment. There is something of the instincts of a_ nomad that causes some men to chafe against the monotony of -employment which entails steady work from 8 o’clock in the morning till 5 at night. They naturally drift to the wharfside for employment. The conditions of wharfside .-employment are necessarily intermittent. Ships do not airive and depart with the regularity of railway trains. And, even with respect to railway trains, the need for labour in the goods yards at the larger centres varies with the magnitude and exigencies of the traffic. Even the goods managers have their wharfside labour difficulties; but, necessarily, on a smaller scale. The problem is to' have a supply of labour at hand when required, and to' do this it is necessary to make the conditions sufficiently attractive to cause men to engage themselves permanently. The nroposal of tha Wellington wharfside employers seems to be sufficiently attractive to cause the executive of tho Wellington Wharf Labourers’ Union to express hearty approval of it, and this after an interview with the manager of the newly-formed Maritime Employers’ Association. It is proposed to register as eligible for employment at Wellington 1000 or 1100 men, and these men are to be guaranteed emplovment so as to earn a minimum of £2 "8s a week. The men will be expected to be in attendance every day, and only financial members of the union are eligible for employment. The employees of the Harbour Board will be placed on a similar footing. Suitable and mutually satisfactory conditions of putting on labour, the selection of men, and so on, having been arrived at, there will still remain the

nomads, constantly recruited from the usual sources. Those who have been registered will have become, to some ex tent, a privileged class, secure ot employ - meut, and to them the industrial firebrand will fulminate in vain, and find no adherents to the assertion that the best way to bring about reform is to so cripple the employer that he cannot help to bring it about. This question of inte.rmitte.nce of employment has an interest affecting directly the rural producer, so far as it concerns the supply of labour, and, indirectly, as it affects the handling of his products at the port of export. Grauigrowing is being largely abandoned pecaute of ther difficulty of obtaining harvest labour. One suggested remedy is tne creation of rural village settlements, where the workers may have homes and hnd employment in the surrounding districts all the year round at seasonable pursuits. It is unreasonable on the part of a farmer to rely on nomadic labour at harvest. There are no bands of harvesters as there are of shearers, who begin the season in the north of Australia, follow the sheds down to the south, then migrate to «ew Zealand and work from north to south, thus finding employment all the year round, and at the same time gratifying the nomadic instinct; and they earn good wages. They are to some extent skilled workmen, are well organised, and, above all, extremely sensitive, and quickly become restive under the slightest seeming invasion of their privileges. As a matter of fact, the “billet” of a shearers’ cook hangs by the slenderest hair, which is snapped if the bread is accidentally not quite up to the mark, or the meat is by some chance not cooked to satisfaction. But there is no such class of harvesters, as it requires little skill to build a stock, and, given the necessary strength, to perform any of the unskilled work about a thrashing mill. If the immigration policy of the Government should result ."n recruiting the army of nomads, then the blessing will become the reverse. It is now for the associated farmers to watch the Wellington wharfside experiment, to adopt some such similar scheme, and the principal ingredient should be that work shall be reasonably secure, and the conditions equitably agreeable. Then the problem of intermittent labour would be on the way of being solved.

gir J. G. Ward’s interpellation an the shape of a motion of No

A Pnll-drcss Parade.

Confidence in the debate on the Address-in-Reply was not expected to fructify into

the deposition of the Government; nevertheless, it was probably an attempt to cause a ranging of members under the banner of a side. But the usual number declined to “range” themselyes at this juncture. The Government, secure in a comfortable majority of nine, which will probably not decrease before the election, and will probably increase after it, may afford to smile at the pin-pricking of politicians of the calibre of Russell and Co., in which, it is worthy of note, Sir J. G. Ward seldom joins. The woes of a charwoman at / Bungtown, or the clamour gf a recalcitrant youth, who is compelled to work put his deficient drills at a- pqnal establishmay furnish a text for a turgid indictment from such members as Mr Webb, from Grey, or Mr Payne, from Grey Lynn, who has had to be sternly reminded that the language of the threepenny bar, or the wharfsider’s terms of endearment, axe not suitable for the atmosphere of an assembly of men who want to do the serious business of the country. But these ebullitions hurt only the one who is a victim to the ebullition habit, which is the stock-in-trade of the street orator, who thinks he carries a Prime Minister’s portfolio concealed somewhere about his clothes, as every soldier of Napoleon carried a marshal’s baton in his haversack. Political warfare of this kind may tickle the ears of the groundlings, but there, is no statesmanlike indictment of the policy of the Government, and, in the absence of this, there is no possibility of weakening the position of the Reformers. A motion of No Confidence, and the subsequent formal tabulated list of the voters, may be a political move for the purpose of manifesting the strength of the Opposition, but it has the tactical disadvantage of exhibiting, not only the weakness of the case against the Government, but the numerical inferiority of the malcontents, and the failure of the attempt to magnify the horde of camp followers that swarmed over the Gillies’ Hill at Bannockburn into the strength of an army ' From a party point of view, the greatest need of the Opposition at the present moment is a policy. There is nothing to go to the country upon, and as the country seems to approve of the Government policy, the effect of the JNo Confidence debate seems to be a foreshadowing of the result of the general election.

An amending Bill to the Harbours Act has

raid Patriotism.

been circulated. It contains a provision that a Harbour Board may, by resolution passed at a meeting at

which all members are present, agree to pay any of its members a special allowance of £1 Is for each day’s attendance at the board, in addition to reasonable expenses actually incurred in travelling to or from meetings or upon any other board business. It seems to be assumed, and the assumption is inevitable, that the system of paying members of local bodies for their services will be extended so as to embrace City and Borough Councils, County Councils, River Boards, Road Boards', and so on, all the way through the multitudinous bodies which are integral parts of the system of local government. It is true that a somewhat feeble suggestion has been made that members of City Councils should be paid for their services; but,- beyond that, there has been no demand for the remuneration of representatives, and so far as is generally realised, few of them would not feel ashamed to suggest it. Under the present sjstem members of local bodies feel them-

selves amply recompensed for the time they give to public business in the expression of confidence reposed in them by their election. It may plausibly be argued that there is an abundance of men who have the requisite brains to become useful members of local bodies, but are unable, without monetary recompense, to give the necessary time for the work. This seems to assume that the condition which the Eomans periphrastically designated by the phrase “res angustce domi,” the narrow circumstances at home is synnonymous with breadth of intellectual vision, and a grasp of public affairs. It is just as unsafe to assume that a poor man necessarily has brains as to say offhand that he has none. Moreover, the guinea a day is a great temptation to one whose earnings are small, and the inevitable tendency of introducing a system of payment is to create a class of professional local politicians. It is true that it is not derogatory to a member of Parliament to accept a salary, or what it was formerly termed, the honorarium ; but it has to be remembered that a man who is quite poor coaid not accept a parliamentary position without payment: he must give up several months of the year in Wellington, and, even if he could give the time, he must incur considerable expense. Again, with respect to Mayors and Chairmen of County Councils, it has to be remembered that they must give up very much time, and incur a not inconsiderable expenditure in the performance of their duties. Therefore, remuneration is only just. But the ordinary members of such bodies have no such plea. And more particularly as to Harbour Boards: they ai’e located in populous centres, so that town representatives have simply to step round the corner to attend meetings, and they incur no travelling expenses. Where there are country members there could be no reasonable objection to a refund of their travelling expenses, but that should be regarded as the limit. It must be considered inevitable that the tone of local bodies would be lowered if the emolument derived from membership should be a matter of solicitude. There has been no Jack of candidates for such representative positions, and it does not at all follow that they are necessarily wealthy men. On the contrary, many of them are poor men, hut in some way gratify a creditable ambition to serve their fellows in a public capacity, and somehow contrive to give the necessai’y time. Most men are proud to be in a position to write the letters J.P. after their names, and a Justice of the Peace is sometimes called upon to subject himself to much loss of time and inconvenience. If the amending Bill passes in its present form, and if, also, the consequences already indicated also follow, then the value of an honorary position would become apparent, and the loss of public esteem can best be indicated by the suggestion that Justices of the Peace should be paid also. The Government will be well advised to drop the unpalatable proposal.