The Dominion. MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1912. CO-OPERATIVE WORKS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1570, 14 October 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1912. CO-OPERATIVE WORKS.

f the Hon sc..Representatives on 1< riday, afternoon a discussion I took place on the co-operative works ' fho Government left most : ot the discussion to the Opposition | members, because, as the Hon, W. i mentioned, the House will shortly be given an opportunity to discuss fully the system under which public works are constructed. It is satisfactory that the Minister indicated very plainly that the Government intends to make a change of some kind in the system, and bluntly declared that he had stopped the work on the East Coast lineTelLuse ne refused to continue a wasteful system" of construction. TheOd o sition criticism was somewhat trivial and unconvincing-. Although o,fnn F f BE? ? lld and other Oppositionists so,zed the opportunIZ t po l e . as lrlcnds of some of the porkers, tjiey did not deny that one SyS t em , is a wasteful one. Nobody who knows anything ot the system is unaware that it is nnii? r °f' s!, - ly bad one fwm any nr ffl - VI 7 savc that of th e lazy Mn ma , n " Acc *> r ding to .advantage of the compel ative system was that it gave an opportunity to the man who was ■ nrnn . strongest, and if it were properly admimstered he would not Mp CU Wr m -° rc !l ' s i llst due." MR. Jill is mistaken: no brilliancy ■ot administration can get much d?qjiflv° 11 <• a b ? cl s) ' stem > thc two disadvantages of which are, first, wat it either penalises the efficient man and favours the inefficient: ana, second, that ifc makes our public works cost anything up to 100 cost C mOIC ttlan thcy 0llg ' li; to

On September 5 of last year we printed an illuminating article by jun. David Jones', who wrote as tno result of much observation of the working .of the system. He gave several examples , of the primitive and costly methods which were complacently tolerated by the old Government—methods which led a settler with whom ho discussed the matter to say that it was not railway construction, but simply relief cftnnot do better than lccall Mr. Jones's excellent description of the way in which the cooperative system works out: Many men ore on these works who are fit for sliovel work; ivast ° n t" l6 ""gllt-to-work" principle, and tho various fangs are made up of men of all these mixtures. Men cannot chooso their mates. If they got a pointer and want to get rid of him n 8 ?- thl ?i'S h tlle degrading custom of balloting him out of the gang. Tho SlI ?l an «•' P ref<?r to P"t up li ■ n P 0 1 " 1" or the man who is physically unfit, or else leave the job, hnl i™ i • an , t ?T the , lnitiativ ® in blackballing his fellow worker. Tho result is that tho system knocks the soul out of, and is demoralising, tho better class of worker. Stevo Boroham, the well-known Labour advocate, in a series of articles on Lo-oporative Labour," says, after fourteen years experience, that "should a gang or good men by any chance get together, and make over Bs. per day, every effort is made either to reduce the pay or break up the gang."

Ho adds that some men seek to "beat the Government" by going very slow for a littlcj and then, by complaining of poor earnings, secure an increase in the price per yard. It is small wonder that this system, which encourages inefficiency and discourages efficiency, has resulted in so large an increase in the cost of railway construction in the last twenty years. The "small contract system has its own dangers, and unless the most careful precautions ai Mi * '?i n ' burden of which will fall upon the engineers, the improvement upon the present systorn might not be great. What' the; Minister must aim at, and get his officers to aim at, is to mako the whole work of construction into a straightforward and businesslike thing, and'not the disguised "relief works system that it is at present, lho railways are constructed for the nation, and only the nation's interests should be considered in constructing them.