The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1875.

Evening Star, Issue 3844, 19 June 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1875.

Mb Stout could not get any sympathy with his motion which had far its object the compelling of farmers, pastoral and agricultural, and other employers of labor, by Act of Parliament to provide sufficient and proper bouse accommodation for their employes. Mr Reid scoffed at the idea, and extolled the bothy system as unequalled in producing happy results. Mr Tolmie thought the idea was excellent, but Utopian. Nothing disheartened, Mr Stout returned to the attack, said any Scotchman should be ashamed to talk of the bothy system, and launched into statistics to prove its utterly demoralising tendency, as proved in the large per-centage of bastard children where it is in force. After all said and done, there can be no doubt should any general check occur to the large public works now in progress, the entire absence of decent accommodation on the farms will become practically conspicuous. Such a check to work would at once reduce the price of labor, and farmers would find themselves m a position to undertake many works they cannot now attempt. The tendency of farming operations at present is to give employment to a minimum of labor for ten months out of the twelve, while for the remaining two months hands cannot be too numerous. The consequence is a crowding together in all sorts of rough sheds and even stables, that is utterly demoralising to those employed. Whether any arbitrary rule can be laid down by law to meet with sufficient elasticity the different circumstances of the case, may well be doubted. Such a law might easily be more injurious than beneficial. Unquestionably it is to the benefit of the employers to house their permanent hands decently, but there is no great advantage evident in being very caring for the occasional labor employed in the busy season. On the motion, as a whole, no one could be prepared to say that it was not right that employers should provide sufficient and proper house accommodation, and so far the Council could not have gone tar wrong in assenting to the proposition. Mr Moody thought there were too many Councillors who neglected their duty in this respect to assent to such a motion. Perhaps Mr Moody was right.