CO-OPERATIVE WORKS

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12844, 29 November 1905, Page 6

CO-OPERATIVE WORKS

To the Editor of the " Timaru Herald.' Sir, —In looking over an issue of your paper the other auy I saw a letter written by Gavin Allan re co-operative labourers wages which 1 know to be misleading and not according to facts. Three years ago Mr Gavin Allan was working at Cheviot tor four months cutting next to me with a co-operative gang, of which he was foreman. The wages he made the first .two months were under 1 6s per day, and the last two months. something under 4s per day, when men. working' alongside him at the same class of work were making over a; shilling per hour. He left at Cliristmas cursing the co-operative works and all connected. with tliem. > It- seems a soil ol Paradise at present. - With regard to wages earned on 1 these works I was six years working on them,-'first in the North Island then on the Seddon Railway (Blenheim) three years, and over two years doing all kinds of work—tunnelling, concreting, blasting, rock-cutting, and earthworks and made good wages all the time I worked but I can assure you I never found such a soft thing as : Mr Allan seems to have struck. Every penny I got I earned hard. As regards engineers being Coueervatives or Liberals, that has nothing to do with what a rnsa earns. They; a price lisfc for the different classes of work at a fair •rate, and if ai man. does hot work he can't make wages, .#nd of course where there are all -sorts and' conditions of , men employed .there are some don't make wages, nor could not- make wages anywhere. With regard to the present Government sending men .to swell the electorates before the elections it is all bosh. To my certain knowledge last election at Cheviot there were not more than half of. the men had a vote , through -their own stupidity and not being long enough in the district. Yet the Government supporter, Mr Rutherford, headed the poll all the same. . I would liketo say a word or two- in reference to Mr Hall-Jones, Minister of Public Works. I consider him. an able man and one of the best Ministers of Public Works "we 'have •had and being an- old ; contractor - himself he knows exactly what,is_ wanted and has never squandered any public money as far as I know and never, paid men fifteen shillings per day as Mr Allan states. As an old contractor myself for the last 30 years, and having put a good lot of work through my hands in that time, I consider the co-operative works are as cheaply done as ever under the old contract system, and in many instances the work is better done. I am, etc., . JOHN JOHNSTONE. Waimate, November 25th. [We have excised some libellous remarks from this letter, and we must decline to undertake the responsibilities of reminding absent-minded debtors <}f the little things they hare left behind tliem.—Ed. T.H.]

Sir, —In your footnote to my last letter you say I have lost my Scotch logic. I don't think I have. I think you have lost yours. When you say that you are responsible for what you publish. I infer from that you are responsible for all the , -correspondence and «vervthing that appears in your paper, What about that exaggerated report of the row in Cain's terrace that appeared in your columns of the 16tli. Are you responsible for that? I always thought that it was Irishmen that: got mixed up in what they say, but" there are Scotchmen, like yourself, that get mixed up as well. I am, etc., GAVIN". ALLAN. [We are responsible for what we publish, but we are not necessarily the author, of all of it as Mr Allan previously asserted. With regard to the Cain's terrace affair, our correspondent, is evidently confusing us with the sensational journal with which he is probably better acquainted than he is l with the " Timaru Herald." Our report of the incident consisted of a small paragraph. —Ed. T.H.] j