PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tursday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1880. COMMON SENSE.

Patea Mail, 16 October 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tursday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1880. COMMON SENSE.

The pay of single .men engaged by the Government as unemployed in this district is now reduced from 21s to IBs per week. This is about equal to the reduced cost of rations under the new contract, the charge being 10;|- per day as against

Is 3d under the former scale for rations. The men receive about the same sum net on pay-day, and the difference is saved to the public Treasury. What are the Government doing about the pay of A.C.’s on the Plains ? If those men are saving 2s a week in cost of rations under the new contract, that

amounts to an increase of pay. Is the colony in a position to increase the pay of A.C.’s? Yet this is what the Government arc doing, unless—which we don’t know—they are also deducting 2s 9jd a week per man as the difference in cost of rations. When the Mail showed, in a recent article, that £4,000 had been lost to the colony

in one year by not inviting public tenders for rationing the forces on the Plains, somebody replied that if the money had not been paid to the contractor, it would have gone into the pockets of the A.C.’s. Really, is an argument like that worth serious atten-

tion ? The pay of the men is so fixed that, after paying for rations, they may have a certain regular wage to draw. If the Government can reduce the cost of provisions, what right have the men to claim the difference as their perquisite ?

What have they done to earn it ? They are entitled to the same balance of wages as before, and nothing more than that. It seems necessary to repeat that this saving belongs to the Government, and therefore to the colony. The Government have done a sensible and proper thing in reducing the wages of “ unemployed to the same level as before the rations contract was altered. It is a pleasure to commend the actions of Ministers, for he must be a queer politician who denies merit where it is

duo. No injury is done to the men in this case, except that they lose a week. They are sensible enough to sec that the change is a mere question of book-keeping as between the Government and their contractor. The men get the same rations as before. Yet the Defence Minister will perhaps inform the public where the 2s 9£d per week he is saving on cost of rations to each A.C. is going to. Who gets the difference ? Surely another £4,000 is not going to bo thrown away without reason or equivalent!