The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1893. LABOR AT HOME.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2907, 24 February 1893, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1893. LABOR AT HOME.

Though the report of the Royal Commission on Labor, which has been for nearly two years inquiring into the conditions of labor in the United Kingdom without having yet exhausted the subject, will propably not be drafted for some months, some progress reports, in the form of blue books, have been issued and contain some very interesting infornration. One of these books, dealing mainly with employers and employed in industries connected with certain departments of transport and agriculture, is extensively quoted from aDd commented upon by aomeof the London papers recently to hand. The disclosures as to the hours of labor in certain industries were decidedly startling. The Scottish Farm Servants, Carters, and General Labour Uuion direct attention to some facts tkat, it is stated, are not understood or known by farm servants and laborers generally—namely, that when they engage with a farmer for six or twelve months, as the case may be, they are bound to obey the mandate or call of the master during any hour of the twenty-four, day or night, should he deem their presence or assistance necessary. The farmer can compel his servant to work whole nights taking in the crops into the stackyards without any additional pay. Should a servant refuse, he ia often dismissed without one penny of wages. Should the servant appeal to the sheriff to recover the wages wrought for, he generally loses his case, and very often has to pay a tine for uot complying with the farmer's demand. The Union characterises this state of affairs as unjust to the worker and expresses the opinion that extra hours and over-time should be paid for—as is done ungrudgingly by colonial farmers. ' The London Carmen's Union give-the hours of the members at from sixteen to twenty hours a day, and the length of hours is also made the subject of specific com; plaint by the Amalgamated Carters' Society of Glasgow and the Ayr branch of the Horsemen's Union The Liverpool and District Branch of the General Railway Workers' Union state that the hours are ten, twelve, fourteen and sixteen hours a day j men have in some cases worked ten, twenty, and twentythree hours on duty. The long hours of railway employees are the subject of continual discussion and reprehension, and Parliament has at last intervened, with a Bill reducing their hours of work to eight daily, though so powerful is the railway influence in both Houses that it is very doubtful whether the measure, which has passed the second reading, will go much further, A wide difference uf opinion has been made manifest on the eight hours question, only one of the railway unions advocating a statutory eight hours day, though the London union of national,. municipal, and vestry employees suggest that the eight hours system be at once inaugurated by placing Government &nd municipal workers on eight hours a day, or forty-eight hours a week; and then other trades, in which a twothirds majority wish to do so, might have these hours fixed by Act of Parliament. It is clearly not in the interest of society that unskilled labor should be employed for fiixteen to twenty hours a day, while tens of thousands of men capable of taking a fair share of the work luue to stand idle. The Labor Commission will do good service if it can point out any way in which the existing amount of work can be redistributed, »o that one man shall not be habitually overworked while another is unemployed.