PRESENT CONDITIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 November 1930, Page 11

PRESENT CONDITIONS.

(To tlie Editor). Sir.—In the Daily News of the 12th there is an article on a contract away from home, wherein the Auckland Carpenters and Joiners’ Union sued H. T. Clement for an extra 5s per day, the plea being that they were away from home. I will also refer to an article on the unemployed relief, tax and labour representation on the board to run same, also to “Pioneer’s” letter of November 0 entitled “Where will it end?” And well may he say “my poor country”; three-fifths of the farmers l of the country can endorse it. In both the ab e cases we have arbitrated labour unions dictating terms, one to the employer and the other to the present socalled United Government; in the latter case they threaten to ruin the Act if they cannot have their own way of appointing members for the board. Note that no other party concerned has made this threat to /the Government, but it lias been a ease many times in the present Parliament, where the Labour tail has swung the United Government. “Pioneer’s” letter is on the right track; it is’a poor case for. the struggling farmer against the heavy odds of high costs of union-labour-produced goods plus short hours worked. Now I will ask your readers, business men, farmers, also union labour, to inform mo through your columns as to how much employment has 'been given under the award rate of wages by all individual farmers—this to bar out factory workers, etc.—-taking all the country from New Plymouth down the coast to Opunake, inclusive of all country up to the mountain reserve. Now there are dozens of farm houses and buildings in that area, or any other such area, that in the towns would have been condemned and new houses built in tlieir place long ago, but the farmer certainly cannot afford to pay the present award rates to buildeis, joiners, bricklayers, plumbers, etc., from what is left to them from their butter-fat returns. /Now in all the area mentioned, taking the last year, from October 1, 1929, to October 1, 1930, I venture to say that not £5OOO has been spent on arbitration wage earners by all the individual farmers concerned. Now no wonder we and all other countries have unemployment, when our countries are hag-ridden by all the labour unions. I say -it now, that it was a bad day when universal Suffrage became law, enabling one class to more or less force their will on all other classes, hurting the other classes financially and ultimately reacting on themselves, by decrease of employment, owing to labour having drained the commodity resources of the employing classes, both farmers and business men alike. This is borne out in the present attitude of the Australian seamen in your issue of November 13.

Further, in regard to universal voting pov ci-, you have Labour ' and' labour unions by a majority of votes putting members into Parliament who have, had practically no business training and very little means of a wide outlook on other industries outside the one they are concerned in. Can you realise, for instance, a farmer employing, say, four men. These can outvote him arid his wife, say, on working the, farm, make the hours to suit themselves, sell the stock at their will, and thus drain the farm of its resources, and then move on. Or, say, a business firm run by the workmen engaged wherein the employer, while he lasts, becomes only a figure head, while ■the workmen drain the commodity values ho had built up, and then comes chaos. Yet by universal suffrage the powers of running the country (which is far more serious) is put into labour hands entirely. To face the matter in a wide view, farmers are only receiving 10 percent. more, for their commodities than they received eighteen years ago, while thev have to pay 70 per cent, more for all they require, and which are produced by industrial labour and protected by tariff duties. .When the exports cannot carry the labour costs of the country, as fixed by arbitration awards, then in the past New Zealand and Australia have gone on the market and borrowed millions, half of which when spent becomes entirely unremunerative, arid then we talk of tho costs of railways, roads, etc.', while the primary producers have millions added to their bur’en and on which they (i.c., their products) have to bear the burden. The United Government got into power on the idea of their borrowing, we will say in the ■ three years before Parliament was dissolved, £70,000,000, and on the presumption of' finding employment for all unemployed' at lis per day of eight hours, or Is 9d per hour, while the farmer on remunerative work barely averages, exclusive of family help, lOd per hour for G 6 to 70 hours per week, his only luxury being a motor-car, which has been earned by all the family. I would like either Mr. W. J. Polson, Mr. Rushworth or Mr.- A. Hamilton to tell the public, in the event of the United Government having been able to borrow the £70,000,000, how much it would have -increased ' the primary producers’ burden per head. It is 'certain that this country would have been in a more parlous sta£e than Australia. It is pretty safe to say that at the present cost of labour against primary products it would be now practically an impossibility to put in a main trunk line as from Wellington to Auckland. —1 am, etc., €). H, AUSTIN.

P.S. —The preceding was written on the 13th instant. I would refer you to your sub-leader, in whichS you tried to strike an optimistic note, but would draw your attention to the fact that never before had the producers to contend against such a heavy handicap as the present scale of arbitration 'wages,, plus short hours worked arid the present price of primary products. In the past both products and wages mutually adjusted themselves to the general cost of ‘ commodities. Referring to your issue on the. 15th instant, I would refer to the paragraph, •’Lang’s Government policy to amend the New South Wales Arbitration Act to secure effective preference for unionists, abolition of loyalist unions formed within the Governmci.t service as the result pf the 1917 strike troubles,” also to a previous issue, wherein your paper states that the Lang Government had remitted the sentences

against' miners convicted of violence, etc., during the New South Wales mining strike. It takes very little seeing to say that the New Zealand labour unions, are tending to go on the same track.—C.H.A. Stratford, November-15, 1930.