The Oamaru Mail. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1880.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 7 December 1880, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1880.

The wages of the men engaged on "theunemployed sections of our railways are getting "smaller by degrees and beautifully less." When the Government fixed the rates of pay at 28s for married and 21s for single men, there wengrfauyl expressions of dissatisfaction throughout the Colony.' The reduction was more severe and Budden than was warranted even by the necessity for retrenchment. Men have been induced to come to the Colony by the representations of the Government's agents, and it is the duty of the Government to treat them with more consideration than would be due to them had they come here entirely on their own responsibility, If a private employer had offered such inducements and made such promises, he would feel himself morally, if not legally, pledged to carry them out. The Hall Government seems to feel no such obligation. They rather seem to derive pleasure from torturing these working men, just a3 the apider slowly sap 3 the vitality of its victim. There is at least one member of the Ministry who makes a boast of having driven bullocks since his arrival in the Colony, Had he said that he had driven niggers, wp would not have doubted his word. Despite our antipathy for such mere professors of sympathy for working men from fellow-feeling, we hope that we may never see him toiling in a railway gang. Circumstances have changed since heTwore fustians. The Governments of which the Hall Government is a scion, swamped the Golony with laborers, and the Hall Government are now in a position to rule the labor market. They, in effecting the reduction in the Colonial expenditure demanded by the Colony, savagely attacked the pay of the wages classes, whilst they left almost untouched ornamental and high-salaried officials. The retrenchment of the Hall Government is a gilded fraud. All must admit the necessity for economy; but the besom should have been more vigorously used in the big building at Wellington. During a course of years this has been the nursery of a colonial aristocracy. Fathers and sons has e luxuriated in its congenial atmosphere, and have become so deeply rooted in its soil that they are held by conservative minds to have a prescriptive right to remain there at will. Perhaps to tear away these rank overgrowths around the Ministerial trunk would be to endanger the life of the tree. Neverthele33 it should, and will, be done ; and, as the Hall Government will shortly be called upon to resolve itself into the anomalous atoms of which it is formed, we may hope that it will be done soon. Four and eightpence per diem to be reduced to four shillings, and twenty-one shillings to eighteen ! Had the working men of the Colony been leas docile,'they would as a body—employed and unemployed—have created such a stir throughout the Colony that they would have compelled the Government to treat them justly. There has scarcely been a murmur from their ranks, whilst the secret wirea which are concealed behind our civil service, and which get corruption and trickery in motion to promote mutual personal, and political benefit have been strained to their utmost tension. It is mean and cowardly of the Government to take advantage of such resignation on the part of the working classes. They have been called upon to suffer taxation" to support in luxury Civil Servants whose wine bills amount to more than their weekly wage—a wage on which many of them have been compelled to provide the necessaries of life for themselves, their wives, and children. We say that those men who have managed to maintain themselves and those dependent upon them on 28s must be miracles of frugality; but what shall we say if they succeed in doing the same on the reduced wage of 245? They may do it; but it will be by a struggle that we would not wish our worst enemy to suffer. The reason given by the Government for making the reducr tions is that the men on the unemployed sections prefer to remain there even at starvation wages to doing farm work at reasonable remuneration. Then, the Government have adopted these tactics in order to starve the men ont, and to drive them in desperation to seek other work. Supposing the Government accomplish their object, the number of unemployed will be increased, and wages will drop still lower, if that be possible. But we do not believe that the men have any such preference for-the inadequate charitable aid of the Government. They should, if possible, in the most emphatic manner, contradict the Government's statement.