THE UNEMPLOYED.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3782, 29 August 1883, Page 3

THE UNEMPLOYED.

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sir,—The loading article of your contemporary on Tuesday is not only a heap ot fallacies, 'but is also odious in the extreme to the labouring class, particularly to thoso not willing to work for wages insufficient to keep them in a respectable manner. Ihe editor seems to put a man assellinghislabour in the same category as a man selling tea and sugar, ignoring tho fact that the grocer can hold out for a better market, where a poor working man must sell, starve, or go in debt. It is utterly fallacious for him to state that a farmer anxious to put in a crop cannot do so with labour at 10s per day, and that men -sn.e out of work because it don't pay to give them 9s per day is equally fallacious. Tho true state of affairs seems to be that they havo refused Os per day iv Timaru and 21s for single men and 28s for married men with families in Otago. If, then, the Government is not playing into the hands » of employers of labour by offering such a mean pittance I am greatly mistaken. Your contemporary seems to be unusually severe on those who in times of depression nro turned adrift, and out of employment, although it is a much harder task for those men to go hunting work than it is to do the work when found. I am acquainted with several in Napior who have, during tho last month, made application for work to tho Corporation, either at day pay, or breaking road metal by contract, and the answer those men got was "avo can get plenty of metal at the prisoner's quarry cheaper than you can do it." Those men have from two to five children not earning a penny. I myself have five, and am one who has applied and been refused. A.ct,_ because the editor of tho Herald is short of material for a leading article, wo must _be subjected to his dastardly spleen. Hoping you will excuse the length of my letter.—l urn, kc, Stonedreaker. Napior, August 20, ISS3.