SNAPSHOTS

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19171, 30 November 1927, Page 11

SNAPSHOTS

[By Scrutator.] The Arbitration Act is in the melting pot, or rather the repairing shop. Some people say it can bo tinkered and patched up; others that it is past mending, and ought to be scrapped. The amending Bill gives us the Government view. What the Labour Bills Committee thinks of it is shown by its treatment of it. Out of twenty-one clauses it struck out fifteen! The Minister in charge ignored this disembowelling of his Bill, and placidly congratulated the House on the happy way Capital and Labour were coming together. Of a verity he was thankful for small mercies! The root trouble seems to be less in the Arbitration Act itself than in the Court, which, as the leading columns of this paper put it, has turned itself into a wage-fixing machine In some mysterious way I don't understand, it has discovered what it calls the "average cost of living," anu has fixed a minimum rate of wages to cover it. The Government i» its amending Bill appears to recognise this as an evil, but to be afraid to grapple with it. The Labour Party blatantly glories in it. I was talking to an American gentleman about it only the other day. and he laughed consumedly. "So, the higher the cost of living. the higher must bo the wages! You New Zealanders must be mad. In America it's just the other way round. The wages must keep below the cost of living." "But," said I, supporting our sanity, "you wouldn't let the worker starve, -would you?" "Starve? "Why should he starve?" he rejoined. "Every workman has his cost of living in his own hands. There's no such thing as an 'average cost.' He can do without this or that, and so live within his wages. On the other hand, the employer can't afford.to pay more in wages than the work produced is worth, can he? If he does he is a loser, and in the end must collapse." He then went on to speak of America. "There," he said, "we've no fixed minimum rate of wages that we must pay, and as for the average cost of living, we don't care a d for it. That's for the worker to look after. We pay the highest wages in the wide, wide world as the published figures show, and we do it cheerfully, because wo get the best, work in the world, and the value of the work always exceeds the wages. We Americans look after the dollars and cents, and yon may depend on it we don't ryiy ■without getting full value." "Granted," I said, "but you can't trust the employer. He may pay starvation wages and draw huge profits. That's what the New Zealand Labour Party wants to prevent." "Trust the employer? Rubbish! Of course we don't. It's all self-interest. He gives good wages because he gets good work. Competition is the cure. An employer who paid starvation wages would get starvation work—and that wouldn't be worth anything." He then asked me if I had read anything about industrial matters in America, and on my frankly admitting I hadn't, he lent me a book,

"America's Coming of Age," by Andre Siegfried. "It's not by an ' American," said he; "it's by a Frenchman, but he knows what hc*'s talking about, and he gives figures as well as facts." I've read it, and commend it to the House generally and the Labour Party m pa-ticular. Chapters XI. and XII., dealing with American industry, aro especially interesting and informing—and this for the employer as much as the worker. Here a worker who owned ] a motor-car would be unthinkable. In America it is quite common, and at- I tracts no attention. As the author j says: "It is quite common to find a■, working-class family in wbjch the father has his own car and the grown-up sons have one apiece as well." A Ford, of course. Speaking of Europe, he says: "Its workmen are apt to imagine that it is possible for them to earn more and produce less. Such ideas ' are out of date in America, where the ! workmen enter wholeheartedly into the task of production." And as in Europe, so also, I fear, in- New Zealand. Mr Coates might consider whether it would not pay to send a small Commission, say, Mr Holland with a couple of his satellites, and three or four employers, to America, to enquire and report. They would possibly find that a i fixed minimum wage is a curse, in that ; it ends in becoming the maximum, and ' thereby paralyses incentive and energy, and reduces all workers to the dead level of the worst. From her geographical position, her climate and coast line, New Zealand ought to become the workshop of the Pacific, and will, too, if both employer and employed set themßelvcs to work together, and produce of their bestAccording to Thursday's cable news Dean Inge is maintaining his reputation as the Gloomy Dean by voicing his apprehension that Scotland may possibly become a mere colony of the. Irish Free State owing to tho unre- I stricted inflow of "low grade Irish" — his words, these, not mine. And a Rev. Duncan Cameron, "formerly a Moderator," rejoices that "such an authoritative voice as Dean Inge has sounded a warning of tragedy to the Scottish race." The crisis, he says, has definitely arrived, and he goes on: "Is Scotland to be Scottish or is it to bo an Irish colony? All signs at present point to Scotland ceasing to be Scotland in fifty years] time. Her nationality and culture will be entirely swamped." These be very bitter words, and methinks the Presbyterian General Assembly might better have devoted itself to" saving Scotland than j to discussing and disapproving Macarthy Trust grants. If what these two gentlemen say is true, it is some compensation to feel that Scotland's loss is our gain. Wo get Scottish immigrants, and she gets Irish. This opinion I have repeatedly heard expressed hero in Christchurch since the cable was published. As regards theIrish I am not able to speak. All 1 feel sure about is that Mr do Valera will lament the loss of his Free Staters, whilst Mr Cosgrave will rejoice at it. So much depends on your point of view. I entirely agree, however, that our Scottish immigration is a great gain to us. I remember a shining instance. It was many, many years ago in Dunedin. I was lodging in a small cottage,\ and adjoining it was another where a Scottish family lived. They were recent immigrants —seven in allhusband a stalwart, red-bearded, and bur-throated bricklayer, his wife a, little woman with somewhat high cheekbones, an eldest daughter, tall, freckled, and fair, and four youngsters, two boys audi two girls, Donald and Angus the boys, Mary and Maggie the girls. I well remember their names from hearing the children so often called, expostulated with, and _ corrected by their mother and sister.

The children were sent off to school every morning welk.washed, combed, and brushed, clean as new pins. They came back in the evening very dirty and bedrabbled, but tho maternal ministration in the backyard with soap, water, and scrubbing brush ■ restored them to their pristine purity wherewith to meet and greet their father on his return from work. He also was toil-stained and begrimed, but the backyard and its concomitants speedily cleaned him up. During the day mother and daughter, after clearing away the breakfast things, making the beds, and sweeping the floor devoted themselves to knitting, 6ewing. and mending till it was time to cook the dinner and lay the table. After the evening meal and the clearing away of the things the children were snuggled up in bed and the rest of the family, father, mother, and daughter, gathered in the sitting-room. This was next to my bedroom. I don't know when they began it but they were alwavs hard at it when I went to bed and "were still at it when I dropped off. It was Scottish songs, with the accompaniment of a cracked piano. In these days the partition wall between the two cottages that adjoined was usually lath and plaster. Through this the* singing penetrated without difficulty, but not so the words. You caught only bits here and there. I was profoundly ignorant of Scottish songs and hence if I chanced to catch a line I couldn't conjecture what went before or what followed. One song began about the bony hills o' Scotland. Whether this was invocation or execration I couldn't tell, for all tho rest I missed. Another fragment was about Mac-something braes being bony, with a reference to "Bony Annie Laurie," whoever that lady was. Then came a song that was distinctly a lamentation about "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bony Doon"—which was all I could detect. Its music, however, was both melancholy and appealing. The father had a song.that he sang, or rather declaimed, as a solo. It bade the Scots "Welcome to their Gory Beds," though why or where was not disclosed. ' Tho singing and piano were in full blast every night when I got to sleep with my head well swathed in the blankets. It sometimes occurred to me that with so many names, places, and things, that were bony and so many beds that were gory, Scotland must be a very good country to live out of, and that this, perhaps, was why the family had emigrated. I recount all this because it marks my remembrance and impressions at the time. It was long, long afterwards that under the guidanco of a sweet Scotch lassie and a mellow wired piano I learned that the hills, banks, and hraes o* Scotland were not bony nor was Annie Laurie herself. It's from that time that I count my knowledge of pure Doricc and love of Scottish songs. What has becorao of that family I don't know, but that they prospered I'm sure. They couldn't help it. And throughout America and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, stock of the same breed are scattered by the thousands—scattered, well rooted, and flourishing. Floreant in aevum sempiternum.