WHAT IT COSTS.

Evening Star, Issue 3934, 4 October 1875, Page 3

WHAT IT COSTS.

To the Editor. Rib,— Can you spare room for the fallowing extruordimuy statement made by Mr B. Whitworth. M.P., at v. meeting in Exeter Hall on the 14th June last, and which brings out another phase of the important question yon treated in your last evening's leader, Mr Whitworth sail: “I am a commercial man more than a politician, and I am connected with concerns in this country employing 45,000 men, and paying something like L 4 ,000,000 every year in wages. I will just give you the result of Sunday’s drinking in one of those concerns. We pay LIO.OOO a-week, and employ between 7,000 and 8,000 men. We never commence work on Monday, because we find the men do not come in sufficient numbers to mat- e it worth while to get up the s*eura to turn the machinery. JNow I have calculated very minutely what the cost of that is to that concern. It is 1.35,000 a-year of a loss—equal to four per cent, on the capital employed. I want to know how long this country can stand such a drain as that. We are competing with the wnole world, and I say that with a weight like that we shall not long be able to compete with her.” Mr Whitworth, in illustration of the results of the facts on which he had been commenting, said further : “ Mr Laiug, the chairman of the London, i -rightou, and South Coast I.ailway, sod ; ‘We h..ve had tenders for fish-plates (of which a huge number are used for railways) and have had an offer from Belgium at 15s a t<>n less than any English manufacturer could supply them nt.’j’ —I am. be., Observer. Dunedin, September 28.