The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1920. A BASIC WAGE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16763, 12 June 1920, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1920. A BASIC WAGE.

Unions appearing before the Basic Wage Commission in Sydney, according to a cable published yesterday, are claiming an annual basic wage of £625 for a man with a wife aud three children under fourteen years of age. This is based on the assumption or calculation that £625 ' is a reasonable cost of living for a family of that size. To-day another cable tells us that the Anglican Synod, sitting at Brisbane, has decided that £3OO a year with a residence, should be the minimum stipend for married clergymen. Allowing lhat a house is worth £75 a year this means that £375 is considered a basic wage for a married clergyman, irrespective of the .number and age of his family, and clergymen quite often are blessed with a quiverful. There is thus a v6ry wide discrepancy between what it is thought a clergyman should be able to live- on aud what is the least a trades .unionist should he paid. _ It may be argued that the ‘ :worker” is harder .on his clothes aud requires more solid food than the clergyman, but this cannot account for a difference of £250, or nearly £5 a week, in the basic wage of the two classes. On the other band a clergyman is generally expected to “keep up appearances,” both in bis own person and in' those of bis wife and family, and as a.-rule there are more calls in the way of charity upon the clergyman than upon the worker; it is regarded as a part of a clergyman’s duty to minister to the afflicted, both spiritually and physically. There seems therefore to be no reason for so wide a discrepancy in the basic wages. These remarks, however, are by the way. What' concerns us more at the moment is the question whether Australia can afford to pay so high a basic wage, whether the Commonwealth can support its population on a basis of not loss than £125 per capita, includin'* young children. New Zealand is at least as. rich a country, proportionately to population, as Australia, and we do not think the Dominion could affofd that sum. The population is .1,250,000 or thereabouts. On the Australian unionist basis therefore a basic wage would aggregate £156,250,000 a year. This amount is assumed to cover the reasonable cost of living of the people. It must he paid out of the Dominion’s products, or, in other words, out of the national income. What the national income is can only he roughly estimated. In the twelve months ended March last .the Dominion exported just upon fifty millions’ worth of produce, hut that included a lot of accumulation from previous years. Probably forty millions is a liberal estimate of the value of the produce of every kind which the Dominion has to sell abroad, and it would pay about a quarter of the basic wage considered fair and reasonable by the Australian unions, say about £32 a year per capita. Where is the balance of_£93 a year per capita to come from ? Let us try. another way. The private wealth of the people of the Dominion in 1918 (the latest figures published) was estimated at £387,000,000, which would suffice to pay the basic wage of £125 per capita for just about two and a half years. The trades unions which have made that claim iu Sydney have evidently no conception of the real meaning of their demands. They profess to want a fair share of the proceeds of their labour. Actually they are claiming the whole and much more. There is not wealth enough in the country to pay their demands. The claim is equivalent to a man whose weekly output is worth £5 at the outside demanding £l2 a week wages. It simply can’t be done, aud there’s an end to it. The claimants appear to overlook that their wages are paid out of the proceeds of their labour, and that they cannot take more wealth than they create. In practice vyorkmen often arc paid more than the product of their labour 'is worth to the employer, hut it is only the fact that the employer possesses a reserve fund,’or capital, that enables him to temjporar-

ily meet the loss, and trades unionists object to capital on principle. If hig'hor wages and a higher standard of living are-re-quired there must ho greater production of wealth to enable these to be met. The same trade unionists, however, who demand these conditions demand also shorter hours and more holidays. They wish, in a word, to create less wealth to inert their greater demands.