CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 19 February 1931, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE

REDUCTIONS IN WAGES..— (To the Editor.) Si r —Now that the Government’s proposal to reduce all wages by 10 per cent, has been placed before the, pub. tie time may be opportune to review the actions of local bodies which have already made drastic reductions in e wages of their employees. In the first place, in numerous cases a varying rate has been made, which is un fair. Ihe skilled man who is earning, say, ESUU per annum is worth liis wages just as urich as the man earning 15s. per and the argument put forward that it costs each man just the same to live is a painfully weak one. It is a question of services, and each man’s services are bought for what it is considered they are worth, and it stands to reason that skilled and specialised services will cost more than unskilled. And yet we are told that salaries are too high, or, in other words, that specialised labour is not worth anything. It is not a question of the cost of living; it is a question of a fair exchange between wages or salary on the one hand and specialised services on the other, and if services worth £6OO per annum are paid for at the rate of £4OO per annum, then a corresponding reduction in efficiency must result, notwithstanding that the person responsible is himself unconscious of the fact. Skilled labour in administrative capacities is worth just as much, or more, in hard times than in good. It is not wages that represent the V rden of local bodies and other concerns to-day; it is mostly capital charges, and. even the slightest reduction in this direction would mean a big saving to the ordinary taxi yer., . The farmer is the man who is growling most, and yet with him. it is simply a case of living within his means, as it is with all of us. He is in for hard times, and apparently he is desirous of seeing everyone else hit also, even though, it may not benefit him one iota. I wonder whether, when the price of butter and cheese recovers and the farmer is again getting a good monthly pay-out, he will commence an agitation to raise wages, and salaries again so that the “hit’may be removed from others. I don’t think. By the time Parliament has finished with the “cuts” just imagine what they will be.—l am, etc., ...

RATEPAYER.

PRESENT-DAY EXTRAVAGANCE.

(To the Editor.) gj r —The devastating earthquake has awakened the people to the fac* that when the towns-people have been rendered homeless by an earthquake it would be inhuman to leave them in the lurch, and only ordinary manliness to render what aid we could to restore them. So far so good for those rendered homeless by the earthquake, but what of those who are evicted and to be evicted from their farms and so rendered homeless by the land sharks. Are the land gamblers sacred, like the sacred crocodiles of India and Africa? And t a wc to make human sacrifices to them as do the coolies and Jackie the blackfellow? The fictitious value put upon the land by the sacred individuals f° rce | up the cost of living and the cost . ci living forces up the cost of production, since the worker who produces must receive enough for his work to pay the high cost of living or starve, as a sacrifice to the revered parasites. When J. look over the factories, shops and foundries in the towns I see all the splendid, '.display of up-to-date machinery and appliances, music, wireless, fertilisers in fact, every requisite both to make poor land yield good crops and to cut out the privation in ■ the backblocks, .even Henry Ford’s Godsend, the “Lizzie’ to convey the sick wife or child to succour. But when I go out back and see the old out-of-date implements so painfully slow, and the poor crops for want, of fertilisers, and ask why they cannot improve, the reply is invariably the same: The mortgagee has the strangling The farmer can never , make the land free of debt, and too often he is to. be sold up at the end of the season—evicted. Are the land shark parasites so sacred to the townspeople and workers that they will allow their business , to strangle rather than lift up their voices against these pagan gods? If the country is to make an. honest effort to get out of its financial difficulties the land is the only means by which it can be done. Top-dressing must be done, proper facilities must be at hand, herds must, be culled, food for the early calvers provided. And if Mr. Forbes is the man he puts himself up to be, he will put the bull chain on the mortgagee. The position to z *(lay is much the same as the Irish land question was in 1880, only it was a famine, instead of an earthquake. While the. charitable were seeking to relieve the distress the land-lords were evicting their 1 tenants. The Irish Parry, led by Mr. Parnell, brought in a Bill for the suspension of evictions. It was thrown out, and the Ir:sh replied by murders. A Coercion Act was passed against the tenants, and more murders followed. Mr. Parnell warned Mr. Gladstone of the grave danger; he passed another more severe Coercion Act. Lord Cavendish and his secretary were hacked to pieces with knives in the Phoenix Park. The Irish Party joined the Conservatives and put the Gladstone Government out of office. Mr. Gladstone came to his senses after a time and passed a Fair Rent Bill in 1881, which made the State step in between landlord and tenant and fix the rents. But it was all done too late. The fires of bloodshed and a lust of hate had been kindled. Ireland fought on until she was free. Other parts of the British Empire began to try to cut. free in fear. Why not let the Arbitration Court adjust matters between the farmer and the man that farms him? There is a view of the earthquake that should please the military propagandist and the Red Flag people who advocate red revolution. They could see at Napier and Hastings what a town looks like after a revolution or a bombardment, and gloat over it. They could walk among the burned ruins and stamp on the bones of the hands of what was once a mother dear, and wave their red flag in jubilation. Any young people should meditate as to whether it would be best to change the Government by the ballot box or by a revolution. Both the revolutionist and the military propagandist are murderers at heart and can conceive no other way of making a living.’’ Yet are they the worst? I wonder. Yes, I wonder when I see the mass of lusty, strong workers who earn from £2OO to £3OO a year swarming to the racing grounds to gamble and spend their earnings, then to the hotels, the boxing shows, where they pay for expensive seats; in fact, any and every means of squandering is being indulged in. Then ’when all is squandered a cry goes up and the homes of the aged. must be scrapped. The weak earning, or rather eking out, a living in a small, business are levied to subsidise, pauperism of. a people who spend all they earn year in, year out, and then live upon the aged and weak, though they earn but 7s. a day in their tottering days. Twenty millions or more are squandered on drink and gambling, on and off the racecourses, and yet they mop up the old man’s morsel. Burgess, the notorious highwayman, threatened to shoot a member of his ’ gang who wished Jto bail wj a

haired old man. How do these so-call-ed sports ingratiate themselves with the powers that he so that the least they earn must ba 14s. a day and up to anything, and then drin.v and gamble it, then fall upon the poor, who earn but 7s. a day, and compel them to keep them at work at 14s. per day? A professor spe ’'ing upon Australia s slump on her railways said they could not pay while the manhood of the country was in the trenches, and someone said they Would not be any better off while the manhood of the country wasted all their time about the races.—l am, etc., BA®,