Wellington Notes.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 38, 13 August 1896, Page 2

Wellington Notes.

The Co-operative System. A lurid light is thrown on the working of the co-operative contract system in the table of the work done and wages earned in the return famished by the Lands and Survey Deparment. These tables furnish lists of work done' under the system throughout the colony, and it is evident that the universal condemnation of the manner in which the work is done, the cost of inspection, and the low wages earned are fully warranted. Taking the minimum earnings in various districts the report shows that : — In Auckland 94 men earned 3s 3d per day. In Taranaki 34 men earned 2s lid per day. In Hawke's Bay 144 men earned 9s 3d per day. Id Wellington 28 men earned Isßd per day. Id Westland 54 men earned 4s 3d per day. In Southland 4 men earned Is 2d per . day. In Otago 10 men earned 2s 2d per day. Government protests loudly and passes Bills to check sweating, and it is proper to ask whether the making of roads and felling busb at such pitiful wages, as their own records show, is not sweating of the wont possible kind. Ministers threatened to withdraw the subsidies they were bound to pay to the Wellington Belief Committee, because they provide work for some 80 married men and pay them 48 6d per day. The Wellington people have subscribed thousands of pounds during the past three years ?to enable men to earn a pittance and keep them off the charitable aid books, and Ministers were highly indignant at the I wages paid. These relief workmen, I if poorly paid, have at least the consolation of living with their families, getting their food cheap, and being: paid their wages weekly. Let us compare their lot with the Southland men who, under the patronage of a working man's Government, and working under a system which claims that the men carry out their contracts under the' profit sharing system and so divide among themselves the gains which, previously were appropriated by the middleman and contractor. This Southland contract was for the felling! of twenty two acres of bush and clearing the fence lines on a reserve in the Seaward bush. The plan adopted in these contracts is for the Engineer to lay off the work and let it at prices considered to yield fair wages. There , is no skilled labour required, for any; man can learn how to wield an axe or 1 bill hook to some purpose in a week or two, not, perhaps, to become as expert as a Yankee backwoodsman, but good enough for rough chopping. These men earned £83 13s 6d on the job, and, being near the end of the financial year, there were no funds in the Treasury for paying contractors, as it was expedient to put off all payments to swell the surplns just then. Bnt it mast not be sap* . posed that the £88 odd was all it dost the colony to do the work. The inspeetian cost £62 7s lOd, and besides this there would be the proportion of .tin salary of the Engineer who would finally pass it— so that it virtually cost twenty shillings to supervise the earning of £l. > Anyone with experience in bush workknows that on a small contract of & acres of busbfelling that the presence of an inspector is ridiculouft. A private employer would arrange that the under- - scrubbing should be dene first, and h« would then visit the ground and paw that and would not require to see it: again until be finally passed it, wham the bash was done and the fence line* cleared. Less than one day would bt taken up altogether. That is how the individual would have his work in. spected; but the State does its bushfelling in a style of grandeur, and em. ploys an inspector to keep the oonteaotors—from feeling lonely, probably. The idea of Government paying an overseer at the rate of £8 per acre to see four poor fellows earn fourteen pence per day is about the most eccentric way of showing sympathy with the working classes ever heard of. The officers to charge of the works in various districts, in their reports, comment adversely on the system, and point out that on road works the contracts are let out in small sections, the supervision is more costly and difficult, the clerical work is greatly increased in specifications, payments, lists of tools to be kept, Ac. There is a great waste of energy through wheel* barrows being used to move earth over distances where cart* or trams would work to greater advantage. There is a ;> general Agreement among practical man ■: that work done under the 00-operative system costs 40 per cent, more than under the old contract system, and if the ex* pense incurred by the scores of unnecessary inspectors, overseers, timekeepers, •fee., were taken into account it would be no exaggeration to say that the work costs nearly double -and yet men work for fourteen pence a day and Ministers claim that it is a blessing 1