LABOUR IN ENGLAND.

Wairarapa Age, 10 August 1920, Page 7

LABOUR IN ENGLAND.

WAGES GOING HIGHER. A New Plymouth business man has received tho following letter from a former employee in England:— "I am still with the Airco Manufacturing Co., which has lately amalgamated with the Birmingham Small Arms Co., but- for how much longer I can't say. Labour is in a very serious condition at and if it does nob end soon it will mean ruin or revolution, or both. Mr Lloyd George has got his hands full at present, and ono can only hop© he will engineer tho difficulty a3 well as he did the war. No sooner is one trade appeased than another starts. Coal to-day is £2 18s per ton, and hard to get at that, llailwaymen are asking another £1 per week; 'bus and motor drivers, 10s j transport and dockers just appeased with 15s and an 8-hour day; bricklayer a last week struck because one gang had laid an average of 700 bricks per day while they only lay 350, and an architect told mo that on a largo contract on hand, up to the present, each brick has cost l-64d to lay, or a man and a labourer take 1J minutes to do the work, and then they wonder at the shortago of houses. The house lam living in cost about £350 about eight years ago, not £1 has been spent on its since, and it will cost from £SO to £IOO to put in thorough order. The sale price is £BOO, tho present rent is £2B per year, and rates about £45 all told, At the end of the year it goes up 40 per cent by law. It practically means that shortly the whole trade of the country will be at a complete standstill, and what is the use of it all? I used to entertain a very high regard for Trades Unionism, I believed it was necessary, but now they have a good power behind them they are simply doing the very things they themselves condemned."