The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1932. MR COATES’S SOPHISTRY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 373, 15 March 1932, Page 6

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1932. MR COATES’S SOPHISTRY.

TT IS IDLE for Sir Coates to say that the Crown will prevent unwholesome conditions and abuses from creeping into industry, following the abandonment of the arbitration system, for the Government is bound by the laws that Parliament enacts, and any abuses that are likely to follow the abandonment of the system would be perpetrated within the law. The bad employer is the exception and not the rule, but he has power to make trouble for everybody else, and it is nearly always the little rift within the lute that leads to the worst industrial discord. However, the merits and demerits of arbitration do not turn solely on the existence of the bad employer. The support accorded to the system by many Canterbury employers is based on a rational desire for stable conditions, particularly in non-sheltered manufacturing industries. There are many men out of work to-day because manufacturers dare not manufacture for stock so long as they are uncertain of the probable trend of wages, and uniformity in this particular is always desirable, not only in estimating costs, but in preventing the constant transfer of workers from one shop to another as the rate of pay varies, even infinitesimally, between various employers. In these and other directions, it would be manifestly impossible for the most paternally minded government to provide regulative substitutes for awards of the courts, and Mr Coates’s old slogan of “ Less Government in Business ” would turn in its grave if any Departmental attempts were made to check up on the minutiae of the relations between employer and worker.

CYCLE REGISTRATION. r-pHE RECURRING ACCIDENTS in which cyclists are involved, and the very much greater number of escapes, have directed attention again to the question of the registration of bicycles. The object is two-fold—to make cyclists more amenable than they are at present to the traffic regulations, and to, make dishonest trafficking in bicycles more difficult. Both of these objects are desirable. The objection that has been advanced against registration is that many cyclists are so situated that they cannot be expected to bear the cost that registration would involve. Nobody familiar with the traffic conditions of Christchurch would deny that it would be to the advantage of everybody if some means of making cyclists observe the traffic rules could be evolved. Foolhardy risks, continually taken by cyclists in the city streets, complicate the traffic problems seriously, and multiply the risks that have to be taken by people who are innocent of any offence. If registration is the only cure for the evil then it is difficult to see how it is to be avoided. RATING ANOMALIES. 'T'HE INABILITY of the City Council to remit the penalty for the late payment of rates is not the only indication that the system needs an overhaul. There is a certain degree of unnecessary drift in the levying of the rate, for the financial year ends on March 31, the new Councillors are not elected until April; they may know little about their business until they consider the estimates in September; and from that time until six months latex - , with its usual last-minute rush of payments, a growing ovei'draft is banking up additional expense for the ratepayers. The need for a graduated scale of discounts for eai'ly payment w'ould be much pre-fei-able to the present system of penalties, for it is not in human natui'e to pay bills before they become due, and yet in the absence of a i - ecognised system of paying by instalments the present practice becomes burdensome for most people.