The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. MONDAY, JULY 16, 1894. MASTERS AND APPRENTICES.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 13, 16 July 1894, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. MONDAY, JULY 16, 1894. MASTERS AND APPRENTICES.

We have already given a summary of the Masters and Apprentices Bill, and now publish some additional particulars. Apparently, in its present form, it will prevent anyone hiring a domestic servant between the ages of 1 -i and 18, without indenturing her in elaborate form to an apprentice hip of not more than six years. This may not be intended, but it would appear so from the Bill. The only casual employment that could legally be given between these ages would be a month's probation before apprenticeship, and an apprenticeship can only be transferred by a Magistrate. Then there is a. distinction drawn between the wages of men and women for the same handicraft, which is surely a wrong principle to give legal sanction to in these days when " equality of opportunity " is sought and idealised. A farmer will not be able to employ a boy or a girl about his place to do casual work, and must indenture his hands between the prescribed ages. No one aged 1-i may be employed unless he or she has passed the fourth standard or its equivalent. Then the scale of pay which it is proposed to establish for apprentices would, in many instances, result in reducing the pay to apprentices all round. The scale for printers' apprentices is very much lower — in some instances 50 per cent. — than that now considered commensurate with the work, and now paid in many offices. Every care is to be taken of apprentices dwelling with masters, who are directed " that such apprentice shall attend Divine service when practicable at least once every Sunday, and shall have particular attention paid to his morals " During the apprenticeship in such cases half the weekly wage is to be paid into the Post Office Savings Bank, and to be paid, with interest, to the apprentice on the conclusion of his terra. While the employers in Wellington are prepared to admit that there is good in the Bill, they affirm there is also much that is evil, and have asked the Government to give masters an opportunity of revising some of the more eccentric clauses in the measure.