LIFE IN ENGLAND.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4802, 26 January 1925, Page 3

LIFE IN ENGLAND.

UNDESIRABLE PLAUE TO LIVE.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND LOW WAGES

The two things which most impressed Mr W. Bourne, of Hamilton, who, with his wife, hap just returned from a trip to England (says the Waikato "Times”), were the tremendous amount of unemployment in the Mother Country and the great drop in wages. Unemployment appeared to be rife everywhere they went, remarked Mr Bourne, and it was a sad sight to see the queues of people lined up outside the public buildings in the different towns watting to receive the dole. In one town they passed the dole office at 9 o’clock in the morning, when there was a tremendous crowd waiting, and when they again happened that way late in the afternoon the queue had in no way diminished. As indicating the extent to which Wages Lave fallen since the .conclusion of the war, he stated that the standard pay for engineers was 54s per week, and for iron workers 355. All other tradesmen in the building and asocla.ted industries, such as plasterers, joiners, bricklayers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, and plumbers, received Is 8d an hour, as contrasted with plasterers’ •IS an hour in New Zealand. Mr Bourne is himself a builder, and declares that the workmen in England, in order to retain their jobs, have «o do a thorough day’s work for even the small wage they receive, and are not allowed, as in New Zealand, to please themselves just what return they give for their pay. Labourers in England receive Is 3d an hour. Mr Bourne arrived in England in the middle of an eight weeks’ strike, in which tlie building tradesmen sought Id an hour advance. The masters offered : /ad, and as this was not acceptable to the men a lock-out was declared, and at the end of eight weeks the meit had tb return on the masters’ terms

The cost of Jiving in England was found to be very little cheaper than in New Zealand. Coal was about the same price as here, while twice the quantity had to be used. The reifls of houses, with all conveniences, ranged from about 18s to 27s a week , a suit of tailor-made clothes cost anything from £6 10s upwards . meat was dearer than in New Zealand, 2s a pound having to be paid for best steak Boots were cheaper than in this lounlry, but taking tilings all round England was a very undesirable place to live in at the present time.

The'chief reason for the unemployment and low wages in England at the present time Was, to tlie speaker’s mind, the fact that England had lost many of her markets.. The workers of other countries in Europe were working long hours for small wages and flooding the world with cheap goods. Britaiii had also supplied some of the Asiatic countries with textile machinery, and had in those countries, where labour was exceedingly cheap, established a serious rival by practically extinguishing the market which these countries for* merly offered.

Mr Bourne noticed that in many of the meat and produce stores in England colonial produce was not classified, except as "imported ” Homegrown meat and Danish butter were specified separately as such, while alt other imported produce was placed on another part of the counter and labelled "imported.” Thus there was no distinction, often between butter from New Zealand and that from Siberia. This was very detrimental to the New Zealand product, but the home consumer somehow had a rooted objec-tion-to - anything “frozen,” which to the average mind wars the hall-mark of an inferior article. This prejudice could only be fought down by a judicious advertising campaign. New Zealand butter and meat could not be obtained as such in the . majority of the snops, and many of the storekeepers did not know how they could procure it, as there, was no distributing siorc in the great industrial North, rersonally, Mr Bourne considered that the New Zealand producers would be well advised to establish their own cold stores at Liverpool, which was a much better distributing centre than London.