Shearing Wet Sheep.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 764, 14 August 1894, Page 3

Shearing Wet Sheep.

2’o the Editor of the Lyttelton Tinies. Sia, —Your temperate remarks oil the wet sheep question in the TV'wiesof Monday last tempts me to suggest a remedy for that, and I fain would hope all other shearers’ grievances, for I dissent from your dictum that ‘ fixity of contract is an essential in sheep shearing.’ My idea is that a shed boss should have the right to sack a shearer at any time without assigning a reason ; and per contra, the shearer should have the right to leave at any time without being under the necessity of tell*

ing pious fictions about a dying mother or a sick wife, and at the time of leaving be entitled to payment in full for all sheep shorn up to the time of leaving. 1 have had thirty-two years' experience as a shed boss, and have always acted on the above principle, and have had no trouble with my shearers. The multiplicity of our laws is the curse of the Colony ; and on the same principle the many vexatious, and too frequently one-sided shearing agreements, olten administered by tactless shed bosses, are the cause all the friction between the shearers and their employers. Let us have true freedom of contract by abolishing all these obnoxious shearing agreements ; if necessary by Act of Parliament. ft matters not whether they emanate from Shearer’s Unions, Pastoralists’ Unions, or arc the concoctions of private individuals—let them go. The practice of shearing wet sheep is not general, but unfortunately some managers, in their haste to get shearing over, do so, careless of the injury done to the wool by packing it in a damp state.—l am, &c., A. W. RUTHERFORD. Mendip Hills, August 4.