South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1890.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6233, 4 June 1890, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1890.

The case of the Wellington Tramway Company and the employees, worked out between Dr Grace, one of the proprietors and a deputation from the Trades and Labour Council furnishes an instance of a class of difficulties which the Unions will often meet with, and find anything but easy to deal with. The tramways, Dr Grace plainly told the deputation, do not pay, never have paid, the owners had to put their hands into their pocket every month to pay wages, how then could they either shorten the hours —necessitating an increase of staff —or increase wages ? How, as he put it, could they get blood from a stone ? From time to time there must be large concerns of one kind or other which do not pay expenses, and must draw on capital, and this long after the business is well established—the Wellington tramways are thirteen years old for instance —and in such cases how can the employees expect full value for their labour ? There seems to be only one alternative, that they must be content with smaller pay and a promise of better when the business improves. This,however, alone, would not be just unless the “ better ” pay meant something better than the average rate in other businesses; or how would the loss during the bad times be made good ? But if this principle of giving higher pay to compensate for lower pay in past times is adopted it would amount to nothing short of that industrial partnership of capital and labour which the Dunedin HerotfoZdemands.in an article we reprint to-day. Such partnerships could not be made the rule unless they were given the support of a statute; the ties between employer and employed are too fragile at present.

it us quickly as they could without betraying too clearly that it is too hot and heavy for them ? They have talked at and talked round all sorts of things, past, present and future, of but temporary or local importance, while finding nothing to say of this great” movement which will not improbably before long confound their politics altogether. We should not expect too much from our representatives, they are but ordinai-y, some of them very ordinary, men hut we have a right to expect them to take note of a movement so important as it now is, so much more important as it seems certain to become. It is foolish to expect, if any one does expect, that the powerful organisations now growing'np will not need legislating for—or against. No one can say at present in what directions the as yet immature giant will use his strength against existing laws, but it is quite time to he considering in which directions his effortß may be beneficially aided, in which usefully directed, in which necessarily resisted. The satisfactory thing about the union movement is that its leaders appear to be as levelheaded men as those who append to their names the letters M.L.C., or M.H.R.