WELLINGTON NOTES,

Hokitika Guardian, 17 March 1920, Page 4

WELLINGTON NOTES,

(Our Special Correspondent)

RAILWAiMEN’S PAY

REPLY TO MR MASSEY.

WELLINGTON, March 10. Replying to the Prime Minister’s statement in regard to railwaymen’s pay M r Mack, the secretary oi the society of Railway Servants, contends it would have been placed before the Wages Inquiry Board when that body was sitting and not.reserved till alter the presentation of Mr Justice Stringer’s report which disposed of the men’s case without giving them on opportunity to appeal. 0 Waiving tins point for the time i being, Mr Mack maintains that if the J increase in the men’s wages were made ; on the basis of the increase in the cosi j of living, the pay of the first class guard j taken as an example, instead of being I raised from £3 9s Od a week the pie-war j rate, should be raised to £5 3s 6d. He | arrives at this conclusion by the assumption that the purchasing power of N the sovereign to-day in comparison with pre-war times is not more than 10s which, of course, is substantially below the calculation of the statisticians, and

wishes the Prime Minister to under- j stand that if the men cannot obtain what they want by peaceful negotiation they may he driven to take some other action. HOMELESS WELLIN'GTON. Before the war it was impossible to make the average Wellington citizen believe he had “slums” at his very door almost as bad as any of those in the big provincial cities at Home, and even in these days, when lie admits there is a great scarcity of homes, no is not eagei to recognise the sordid facts. But Mr Peter Eraser, the member for Wellington Central, has been labouring for a year or more past to attract further attention to the scandal of Wellington’s slums and lias at last induced the “Even - ing Post” to let a little light into the ' situation. The representative of the j pajier was first taken to see some of the j “better class” houses. “Their timbers are so rotten,” he reported in Saturday night’s issue, “that one could almost put a finnger through them ; their iron j roofs have rusted away so that any j shower comes through them like water I through a sieve. Their rooms are pok j oy and dark, with windows often out of' working order, so that they are eithei j up or down permanently; the outhouses j are usually in worse condition still, be- j ing hardly any protection against the weather.” These are the better homes of the bad class. THE WORSE. 'i'he description of the “worse” houses eoniirms everything that has been written on the sbject in this column from time to time, “in the three rooms of one house,” the reporter writes, “there were fifteen people—a widow and six orphan children in .one, and a man and wife and six children in the other twoIn nine houses in one property, owned by a public body there were fifty-nine men, women and children, including eight returned soldiers. The worst example of all seen in two hours’ tour was where a widow and six children were liv ing in a condemned house with glass out of the windows and the roof so leaky that the ceiling paper hung down in curtains across the upper rooms. Every time it blew, one or more of the remaining panes of glass went, and in a house „iose by where the iron already had been removed from the side wall by a houseknacker, lay a woman with a broken leg.” And this in the capital city of the Dominion, which prides itself upon the enterprise of its muniepnl government!

COST OF LIVING

The appointment of the local tribunals which Mr Massey hopes will prove another barrier in the way of the profiteer are not arousing much local enthusiasm. The failure of the Prime Minister himself, with all his good intentions, and cf the Board of Trade with all its industry and vigilance to check the continued advance in the cost of living has left the consumers with a feeling of despair. The Returned Soldiers’ Association however, is taking the matter in hand and it hopes at a public meeting to bo held shortly under its auspices to stir an apathetic public inte some sort of effective action that will save the community from what one of the promoters described as the last straw of extortion. The promised agitation has not inspired thf patient housewife with much hope.