LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1148, 8 June 1911, Page 6

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

UNDER A LIBERAL GOVERNMENT. Sir,—l read, with considerable interest, the report appearing in your columns the other day, of. an interview which took place between representatives of the I'urniture Trade Union and the Ministerlor Labaur. That the criticism levelled against the Department by Mr. Moriarty was ampiy justified has been fully brought home to me to-day. In' April last the master butchers of Wellington, by requisition under Section 25 of the .Shops and Offices Act, lflOS, iixed the hours ot closing their shops at 5 p.m., 011 Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and i'ridays, 1 p.m. on Wednesdays, and 7 p.m. on Saturdays. These hours, according to ' the Act, cannot bo altered for a period of six mouths from the date of Gazette notice fixing such hours as the hours of closing the butchers' shops in Wellington. Notwithstanding this fact, however, the Department, in direct defiance of the law, has granted permission (which it has 110 legal power to do) to the master butchers to keep open until 7 p.m. t'o-night, t'he night before the King's birthday. Now, sir,- 1 am not concerned as to whether the closing of butchers' shops at 5 p.m. to-night would inconvenience the employers or otherwise, but what 1 want to point out is this: that under a socalled Democratic Government in a country where we have universal suffrage, and the people are supposed to have more powers of self-government than most countries on this globe, a Government Department, which is supposed to have been created to administer the laws passed by Parliament, can assume to itself power to ignore such laws, to put the requisition I have previously referred to, on one side, and allow others to do just exactly what they please, irrespective of its legality. I think it is nearly time the workers of the Dominion realised how they are being hoodwinked by this so-called Lib-eral-Labour Government. Acts with highsounding titles, are placed on the Statute Book, allegedly in the interests of the worker, but when it comes to their administration, we find out; how sincere tho Government which placed them there, is; and when we find, as I have found today, that the Department, whose duty it is to administer the Shops and Offices Act, deliberately agreeing to allow employers to defy and break that law, we. can only come to' the conclusion that with ali our so-called Democratic Government theie is nothing in tho annals of the Conservative party's reign which for audacity and despotic misuse of power comes within a thousand miles of it. — I am, etc., . A. li. COOPER, Secretary, Butchers' Union. June 2, 1911.