The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1905. RECORD BREAKING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 15 November 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1905. RECORD BREAKING.

A new shearing, record has been established in New Zealand, A man at Hastings shore 332 sheep in a day and beat the last record by ten. If you saw the Press Association wire, you will have noticed that the shearer’s name was not mentioned, that it did not say whether the sheep were hand or machine shorn, that the length of the day was not set down and that the kind of sheep were not stated. But the chief point is that the name of the man who broke the existing record was not mentioned. Why ? Simply because this kind of record-breaking is useful. The shearer is not a racehorse which cuts out a mile in a fraction of a second less than Carbine or Solu-

dubs for ten hours. He did not sail round the world in a beerbarrel, or do any usdess or absurd thing like that He didn’t even win a bicyde road race and fall off his machine ruined for life. Therefore don’t mention his name.

Record breaking is usually a fool pastime but the useless records receive so much space and are considered so important that the news and the name ot the hero are flashed all over the earth. The man who ploughs three acres a day with a single furrow plough, the person who chops ten tons of firewood in ten hours, or the navvy who shifts more yards of earth than any other navvy, are not usually looked on as heros. Generally they are' credited with being fools. The man who has just beaten the record for shearing is worthy of greater praise than the record club swinger, or the idiot who skates round the world or the insane person who floats round in a boat. He is doing something useful.

Ip all the energy that is used up in useless record-breaking could be harnessed up to something that really mattered the' commerce of New Zealand would increase by leaps and bounds. But it is not fashionable to work hard —except on piece—in New Zealand. The minimum wage racket had made it unfashionable. If there was a minimum wage say of fifteen shillings a day for shearing, do you think that the Hastings shearer would have shorn over three hundred sheep ? The boss of that shed would of course cheerfully pay the man for the work he had accomplished, but in everyday life the man who loafs and the man who doesn’t loaf get the same rate of pay. There is a good lesson to be learned from the shearing tally of that champion at Hastings, and it is that the best wage should go to man. You could break the heart of a man like that shearer by paying him the wages of a loafer or by acknowledging the loafer to be his equal.