BOOTMAKERS PAID OFF.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1913, 22 November 1913, Page 6

BOOTMAKERS PAID OFF.

HANNAH'S FACTORY CLOSING. (By Telegraph.—Pre3s Association,! Christchurch, November 21/ Mr. Robert Hannali, the well-known lifcad of the boot manufacturing firm, is in • Christchurch to-day. He has decided to close down (lis Wellington factories to-morrow, oil account of the effects of the strike. This will throw a largo number of employees idle. In conversation with a member of the firm; (Air. J. A. Hannah), in reference to the above, a Dominion reporter was informed that this drastic step of closing their Leeds Street factory was unavoidable in the present circumstances. The Jinn's stocks of leather are just about exhausted.' Jiorc particularly is this so in tlie ease of sole Heather. This material is drawn from Dunedin principally f and the firm has endeavoured to'get in supplies from that port by way of one of Wellington's "backdoors"—Wanganui, to wit. The shipment reached Wanganui safely, only to lie held up owing to the strike ' there. Another cause that lias contributed to the.closing down of the factory is the fact of the firm not being able to get goods away to their many branches in the .South Island. | Nelson and Pictoir have been served without difficulty, and it is hoped to relieve accumulations by a dispatch to Lyttelton on Alonday, but West Coast ports have been sealed for a long time. The threatened coal shortage lias not troubled the firm at all, as they draw their power t'roin a ■motion gas plant. Considerably more than half of the employees have been idle for the last few days, and when the remainder of the operators are paid-off lliis morning, this will mean ICO more workers to swell, the ranks of the unemployed. Quite a liumbor of these men have been in the employ of the. linn for upwards of twenty-live years' unbroken .service, and the step the linn have been reluctantly compelled to take must he a serious thing Tor thorn. Until such lime as normal conditions prevail in regard to the procuring of suppl'es of raw material and (he satisfying of the demand for the manufactured article.' tln> factory-which is the largest of its kind in the Dominion—nnml remnin closed.