WORKMEN AND WAGES.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 11700, 8 March 1902, Page 4

WORKMEN AND WAGES.

The London correspondent of the " Lyttelton Times" writes:—Mr C. J. Wentworth Cookson, C.E., who returned from Spain a couple of months ago, leaves at the end of February for South Alrica, where he hopes to obtain employment in the construction of the new iiailways projected for the development of the two new colonies. Mr Cookson contributes to the " Empire Review " an article on the " Crisis in British Industry,' 7 based on his twenty y-ears' engineering experience in Australasia. The pith of it is that a good man at a good wage working eight hours a day is the cheapest article in the labour market. Mr Cookson shows by illustrations from his work in the colonies that work done by men working for ten hours a day at ten shillings, cost 15 per cent, more than the work when the men only worked eight hours a day for eight shillings, the increased 25 per cent, of wages not producing an increased 25 per cent, of labour. Mr Cookson's experience has been that an increase of wages with the understanding that more work is required, has led to a considerable increase in the contractor's profits, and that a reduction in wages from 8s to 7s 6d a day led to an increase of 15 per cent, in fhe cost of the work. He pleads not as a mea-. sure of philanthropy but as a method of increasing the employer's profit, for a shorter hour for the British workman, thereby giving him the chance of seeing something of his family and home during the hours of daylight. At the same time he warns the British workman that he will have to work harder, for "men -working as I havp. s»en tli2:n w.-rkiog It. inir.y i.v:.~ ..i £*. b !, would net receive in Australia the same amount of pay that he does in England; most contractors would not retain him unless he "increased his stroke." In one of the shops in Portsmouth dockyard, where Mr Cookson saw 50 men at work, 20 were always idle. The State was paying 50 men ifor 30 men's work. "In Great Britain," says Mr Cookson, "we must come up to the standard of energy displayed by the workmen of the outside world, or reconcile ourselves to losing a large proportion of our trade."