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do not get 18s. a week?—Oh, yes, any amount of them. I know a girl in Wellington who receives 10s. a week, and she keeps herself on that, including clothing; but she does not look as if she were very well fed. 16. There are a large number of operatives who do not earn enough weekly to keep themselves independent ?—A large number. 17. You say there are a great many in that position ?—Yes, I believe they are in the majority; they do not make enough to live decently on. Of course there are some, but only a few, women in the dressmaking trade who receive large salaries, but the majority of dressmakers do not receive enough to live on in decent comfort nor anything like it. 18. Would you kindly tell us how they manage to live ; would it be correct to say that they live on their families and friends largely ?—A great many of them have a furnished room, and visit their friends, relatives, and so on, on holidays, where, perhaps, they get their dinner and tea. When they go visiting in this way it saves them a good deal in cost of food. I have no doubt this is practised to a considerable extent. When these young girls can go to friends to tea on a Sunday, or two or three days in the week, it makes a great difference to them in the cost of living. 19. The community, then, support these people more or less—is that the effect of it ?—■ Personal friends do. Then, again, some of these girls club together: Two, three, or four of them will make a co-operative business of it, calculating that, clubbing their funds together, the cost of two or three together would not be more than the rate for one and a half taken singly ; they find this cheaper. 20. Are you of opinion that this practice of not indenturing young people, but, instead, using their labour two or three years and then turning them off, accounts for a good deal of the complaints of bad workmanship, and for some of the poor work of which we sometimes hear ?■—l think it is the main factor. 21. We now come back to the boys. You spoke of the practice in the plumbers' trade of employers taking boys on for two or three years and then getting rid of them. That is not the only trade in which such a practice prevails ? —No ; that is not the only trade. 22. What is the favourite age at which boys are taken on like that ? —Fourteen or fifteen years; that is the age they mostly get them. The reason I spoke about the plumbers' trade particularly was that some of the work is so intricate and fine that they are obliged to have the most skilled men, who have served their time in England, to do it. There is not so much lead work required here as in England. It is mostly iron or zinc work that is done, and this kind of work does not require the skill that lead does. They can get boys, after two or three years' service, to do this iron and zinc work as well as a man ; they can do ridging and like work as well as the skilled tradesman. 23. That is, these boys can get up to be good rough assistants?' —Yes, after two or three years, if they want higher wages they are discharged or paid off. But employers are not all like that in the plumbing trade. There are some good shops in that trade. There is one in the city here, as I have stated, where they prefer to get journeymen from the Old Country. They prefer them to the colonial trained men, unless they have brought the young men up under their own training. With a view to having journeymen of their own training, they indenture their apprentices and treat them well; they have classes for these boys so that they may be taught every branch of the trade. They come back at nights and the employers give them a workshop to enable them to practise and improve themselves in the trade. 24. Do you mean that the average colonial youth is not likely to become as good workmen as the English trained workmen?— Not under present conditions. 25. Do you think that inferiority is due to any laziness or want of intelligence ?—I do not think so. I think that the colonial youth are just as smart and qnite as intelligent; but they want technical instruction and a sound system of training. 26. Do you say that at present we are turning out a race of merely half-skilled labourers ?—That is what I find; lam confirmed in this view from my observation of the men who come to me at the Labour Department seeking employment. 27. You say that these young men who have been turned out after two or three years service come back to you to apply for rough manual labour ; do you think these young men are any the better for the two or three years' service they have gone through ? Are they any better for the time they have given to the shops in town ?—Young men are good at any work so long as they are young and can adapt themselves to a country life. They are as good as if they had been in the country all their life, but it is not so with a man who has got well up in years. 28. In the large towns of the colony do you find that there are five or six different prices ruling for skilled work ? —Yes; Auckland is about the worst, and has been ■ 29. Captain liussell.] You mean the worst-paying ? —As a rule they are paid lower prices in Auckland. It is said, however, that rent and the cost of living are much lower there than in other parts of the colony. Wellington, however, has obtained the supremacy for high prices for skilled labour and wages generally. 30. Hon. Mr. Beeves.] You say "it is said" that they can live cheaper in Auckland than in other places ; is the department able to prove that ?—We do know that rents are cheaper there, and that is a very large item in the cost of living. 31. Is rent cheaper there than in Otago or Canterbury ?—Yes. 32. Than in Wellington ?—Wellington is the highest place. 33. With regard to the proportion of the number of children to adults, is there any difference in that respect; is there any greater tendency towards the employment of merely young people in one place more than another ? —I have not noticed it in that way. 34. With regard to the condition in which these people are living, I mean the sanitary con-