THAT HARBOR BOARD EDICT.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2054, 23 September 1880, Page 3

THAT HARBOR BOARD EDICT.

To tlie Editor of the Globe. Sib,—l should like to offer a few remarks »pon the resolution come to by the Harbor Board in respect to employes who become bankrupt. I am not acquainted with tho particular case which provoked the disouseion by the Board of this subject more than that it appears to have been brought to the notice of the Board by the man's creditors —a number of shopkeepers. Had I been a member of that respeoted body, I must say my answer to the shopkeepers would have been very different to what theirs seems to have been. In the first place, what, it may be asked, has the Board to do with seeing that the debts of the labouring men in their service are paid or otherwise ? The Board are large employers _of labour; so, we may say, are the Union Steamship Company • but, whoever would dream of asking that company, or asking any other company, to discharge their workmen, or seamen for instance, beoause a pack of impudent shopkeepers had chosen to give goods to such workmen on oredit. Why, the proposition would be laughed at. Then as to bankruptcy. Is it to say that because a man is a laborer at 7s per day, and because, like most poor men, he is wealthy only in the numbers dependent on his earnings, that he must not protect himself by a recourse to the Bankruptcy Court ? If a man, be he laborer, shopkeeper, contractor or merchant, is unable to meet his liabilities, I take it that it is his first duty, rather than a crime, to see to it that what he does possess shall be fairly divided amongst those who have claims against him. There is a great whine about "rogue " and "scoundrel " set up whenever a poor man fails to meet his debts nowadiys, while the gentleman trader, who compounds his thousands of pounds at the rate of thousands of shillings with his deluded victims, struts about the earth like a very peacock. How many could I point to now sitting in high places, rearing their heads above their fellows in this beautiful land, who, if failure to pay all but one hundred pounds of their debts was to have been a crime, would be such enormous criminals as to be for ever held in execration, to many hundreds is the score against them. But, Sir, leb us hear no more of loud-mouthed condemnation of the poor. Times are hard enough, and work scarce enough, and wages meagre enough in all conscience, and, I might add, rents and living, and clothing and fuel high enough, without wishing to add tho pain of threatened starvation to the suffering of those whom Providence has ordained shall earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. The laws of the country are more than sufficient for the protection of the astute tradesman, whose care it is and should be to see to it that his anxiety to make money does not blind his judgment in choosing his customers. Apologising for troubling you with this, I am, &c, A SDB3ORIBER. Lyttelton, September 22ad.