Deputations to the Premier.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 320, 22 May 1894, Page 2

Deputations to the Premier.

(PER PRESS ASSOCIATION). CHRIBTCHURCH, May 21. A number of deputations waited upon the Premier to-day. A deputation, representing girls discharged from the Kaiapoi Woollen Factory, asked whether Government could assist them. The Premier said Government could not interfere between the Company and its employees. He believed in self-reliance, ani he thought they had done quite right in starting for themselves, and for his own part he would be prepared to give them any work that Government might want done. After some conversation regarding the apprentices system, and the advisability of starting state workshops, the Premier promised to consider the matter. In reply to a deputation from the Women's Christian Temperance Union the Premier promised to bring the matter of the establishment of an Inebriates Home before his colleagues. ! The deputation urged that the Government should prevent the issue of a publichouae license at Cheviot. The Premier said Government would give no special facilities for a license, but if a transfer was contemplated that was a matter vested in the Licensing Committee, and Government could not interfere. Referring to Clause 21 of the Act last session he said Government had been most unjustly accused of having passed legislation to defeat the wishes of the Sydenham people. He was responsible for Clause 21. His attention had been called to the fact that the Kepresentative Commissioners, after the census, bad the power of altering nine electoral boundaries. He was not going to leave them the power of over-riding the wishes of the people on the licensing question, and therefore framed Clause 21 to meet the case.