OTIRA TUNNEL

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 128, 3 June 1919, Page 3

OTIRA TUNNEL

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir, —Surely you have not reported Mr. Holland correctly in your issue of the 27th inst. I have always understood that oilskins were a comparatively cheap class of clothing, but according to Mr Holland, to dress in oilskins costs £1 3s 6d per week, or say, £60 per annum. Evidently the word week has been substituted for nionthj and even £1 3s 6d per mouth is a very liberal allowance for this, item, as two or three suits of oilskins a year should be ample for the class of work in question. Mr. Holland says the men working outside the tunnel receive as low as 13s per day. .Tust think of it ye backblock settlers, 13s a day, no rates, no rents, no fences to keep up, no mortgage interest falling due, no 16 hours a day, and no cows to milk on Sunday. As. these men work comparatively short hours, they have ample time to gather their own firewood, hence no need for n coal bill, an item which should appeal to the city dweller When at the Otira recently, I remarked how well oil those men were. The shacks Mr. Holland speaks of are far superior to what my parents had to live in when they arrived in New Zealand some sixty years ago. Mr. Holland plausibly says the average wage earned is lSs per diem, and that, generally speaking, the post of living at Otira ' has risen quite 100 per cent, since the war began, therefore the 15s has a purchasing power of not more than 7s 6d as compared with the pre-war wages. Consider the question from another point of view, and for the sake of argument accept Mr Holland's figures. Before-.the war the cost of good wholesome fond per man usually ran from lls to Its per week, an average of 12s 6d. Say the cost is now 255, this leaves the 15s per diem man £3 5s per week for clothes, whisky, and sundries. Single men under such conditions can easily save a hundred pounds per annum. —I dtn, etc, AN OLD CAMPER.