Work and Wages.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1810, 22 March 1886, Page 2

Work and Wages.

If people happen to be " unemployed "in this colony they don’t get much in the way of help. The Premier lately told the unemployed down South 1 1 at the Government could only give employment ns an exceptional thing and at low rate of wage, and that the business of the men was to find properly paid work for themselves. There is some force in this view of the case, but when a married man with a family h«i to take work from the Government at 4s 6d a day, that pittance, allowing for broken time and had weather, won’t pay the rent and give the wife and children food and clothing. The Corporation at Masterton recently out down the pay of their laborers from 7s to 6s per day, which was a mean, cruel, and most ill-considered

proceeding. Wo do not believe any real saving will be effected by this reduction in the w.iges of a few men, because the men will not work so heartily as they did before. In Sydney there is an “ unemployed difficulty,” but tue Government there have some bowels of compassion, as they have put the men upon work at which they can make six shillings a day. In the good old times in these colonies the platform of the laborer was tersely expressed in the distich “ Eight hours for work, “ Eight hours for play '■ Eight hours for sleep ” And eight shillings a day. And in those days laborers got that—and more.