MILKERS AN UNKNOWN QUANIITY. The Why and the Wherefore.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 286, 23 December 1905, Page 6

MILKERS AN UNKNOWN QUANIITY. The Why and the Wherefore.

" IIJT ILKERS are an unknown ITM. quantity — as high as ,£1 5s u.iicl £1 7s 6d per week and found being offered." These -words are taken from the monthly pages of the "Labour Department," issued by Government authority, and the irony that is wrapt up m them tickles us muchly. We are not in the least bit astonished to learn that milkers are an unknown quantity at as high as £1 5s and found, when from the other fields of industry there is a strong and insistent and unsatisfied cry for labour, unskilled and otherwise. • * • Look at the allurements of the milker's life on the average dairy farm, and marvel. He is dragged from his slumbers at the< witching hour of 3 30 very often to get m his cattle and perform the hundred and one agreeable little offices connected with the milking of thirty or forty cows. By the time he is through, and has snatched his hasty breakfast, there is no end of farm employment to keep him busy until the evening milkmg-time conies round again, and, by nine o'clock, after going hard all day, he may find himself at liberty to sneak off to bed. The same cheerful routine awaits him all the year round. No holidays for the milker, for the milk must flow both morn and eventide every day from January till December. • • • And all this for as high as twenty-five bob a week and found. No wonder the job isn't rushed. No wonder the "Labour Journal" observes, with a wink of its eye, that the milker is an unknown quantity. Compare his lot with the city artisan, or even the navvy who does his Government stroke for seven or eight bob a day, and watches the clock narrowly to make sure he doesn't do* a stroke beyond his allotted eight hours. Contrast his seven-days' tally of milking at early morn and dewy eve with the town worker's Saturday half-holiday and his Sunday rest or pleasure-tripping. • • • Can you feel surprised that the milker is an unknown quantity, and that he isn't yelling for country employment? The heroic work of colonisation, with all its manifold trials and rigours m the back-oiocks tries the spirit in a man right enough. But he has the spur of self-interest to carve out a home for himself m the wilderness. The hireling, who gets up in the dark and milks his tally of thirty or forty cows twice a-day all the year round for twenty-five shillings a week and found, needs a greater stimulus to keep his nose at the grindstone. ■» • » Honest toil, of course, is not to be despised nor decried. Still, you niay have much more than your fair share for the money. And honest toil must be diversified with recreation and holiday, and brightened with hope, or it may become as' joyless as the routine of the galleyslave. On the whole, we cannot feel the smallest surprise — especially on the threshold of Christmas — at learning from the State Department of Labour that "milkers are an unknown quantity" — at the price.