Our Wellington Letter

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 143, 27 May 1890, Page 2

Our Wellington Letter

(I_lOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Wellington, May 22. This is a season of unreet. Th© contagion of a demand for shorter hours ia spreading far and wide, grocers assistants, hairdressers assistants, drapers assistants and journeyman painters, are all forming Unions, and so far the masters have given them a friendly hand and Receded to their reasenable requests Purely that millennium mustVbVit liand./ I TM _** Question >.*■' What - -' shall we do I with our '""boys'* ? is ittill troubling the tMnking portion of ou* . couunuhity. The "Evening 1 Post iays^

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tbe remedy is, " Marry them to our girls, and let them settle on our lands to increase and multiply and replenish the earth." The Bost, continuing, oalls on the Government to give every facility for the occupation of Crown Lands, and to make every endeavor to keep our young people with us, ; and to depend more upou the natural I increase than upon immigration to populate our . colony. This is very good advice, but it is necessary for the Govern ment and heads of large establishments to remember that there are hundreds of young people in their employ who cannot go to the country for the want of means and, even if , they had, it is not desirable, for eome one must do the clerical work, aiid 'that worlc should be paid for At a reaisonable rate. What have we before V ns to day in our banking institutions ? **-*T\ Why, yosng men are told that they most not think of marrying until they are favored with an income of £250 a year, but those who impose tbis seem, ingly wise restriction do not follow; up tbeir advice by giving the unf or tun a tes under then any chance uf reaching tiie coveted salary until they have attained that age when ".the tender -chords in thi human breast" have al- ' most ceased io vibrate. The. same may be said of many of those in Government departments, who aire kept at a miserable salary for years by the cowardly Heads of Departments who, wallowing in their own £700 and £1000 i year, grind down their subordinates who are precluded from ap- . pealing ito a higher power, and thus the heads make their own positions safe by working their Departments economically out of the sweat of those • beneath them. It is necessary to haye a certain humber of clerks in the rarious departments, pay them their due, let them raise their heads as men, give theni an .opportunity to settle down in happy married life, and thus p"ut a stop to most of the evils of the present day, and our sunny "New Zea! land will ring again with the shouts of those who haye^heen.relaaaed from the. bondage of slavery while our f iir colony will become what nature in tends it should become, the happiest and brightest spot on God's earth. During the dry season when the -reservoirs were, getting rather low, orders were issued that the electric light, which is worked by water power, was to be cut off about one o'clock ■each morning. Naturally this has ' oaused a deal of grumbling amongst those whose duties keep them out ' •until -tha '• Wee Sma Oors." One "] writer is so indignant that he hopes that he may break his heck, so that the City Council will be called upon to pay. about two thousand pounds as damages to his sorrowing widow. It s is the old cry of " much wants more"? It may be annoying to have the light ( turned off early occasionally, and to offer up prayers for a returu of the gaslight, but my experiences, and they are numerous of the tricks of the gas * lighting, are extremely bitter, aud f personally I" should be very sorry-tn . *ee the Electric light given the cold t shoulder. 1 '—— —*— — ■*» ' i