The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, September 4, 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1142, 4 September 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, September 4, 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

That the difficulty of defining a living wage consisted of something more than finding out what a man can live on, was explained bjr Mr Justice Heydon, in the Industrial Court at Sydney last week. “A man might live on xos a week,” said his Honour. “He might sleep in the Domain every night, and go bare-footed ; and for that matter, if he was alive at the end of the year he might be all the better for it. The point is that that standard would not be a reasonable one, and we must have a reasonable standard.” His Honour also pointed out that in the other extreme a man might spend every penny of an income of ,£IO,OOO, but that could not be taken as a living standard. Some families spent all that the wage earner brought home, and even went into debt, while others saved money under similar conditions. The problem was to find the reasonable medium

A writer in the N.Z. Herald of Saturday last presents a pen picture of Waihi, the scene ot one of the most disastrous and ill-advised Industrial upheavals yet recorded in the annals of the Dominion. The writer says: “I return to Waihi after an absence of many months.and find to my surprise that I am as a stranger in a strange place, although a familiar spot and every stick and stone of it dear to me. There are numbers of fresh faces ; the old faces few and far between, and for the most part wearing a subdued and chastened expression as if the hand of lortune had laid heavily upon them. The erstwhile thriving street looks forlorn ; the shops half empty, and the crowd, why, where have they gone ? Alas ! the empty homes ; thelittle houses that were so trim with lawns and gardens. The broken windows seem to look out upon me wistfully, as it apologising for their unkempt condition. In the gardens the flowers are trampled and the trees broken.

. There is uo sign of the strife that raged so fiercely for months. The scarlet standard is nowhere to be seen ; the voice of the gentle Federationist is not heard in the town, but the shadow of ‘strike’ still broods over it and cannot be shaken off. They have many things to answer for the leaders of that strike. Desolate homes, ruined prospects and estranged friends cry aloud against

them. But as I weud mv way to the railway station in the evening a handsome young woman walks swiftly past me, and looking defiantly into ray face breathes the one word‘Scab,’ so pregnant in its meaning. She was a ‘Scarlet Runner,’ but I, having no heart left in me, could only smile at her and walk on.”