Rangitikei Advocate. MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8892, 12 August 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

ONE of the first reforms which will engage the attention of the country party when it has developed and lias secured power will certainly bo the abolition of the Department of Labour, not only because of its heavy cost, but because it chiefly aids in unsettling the people, and encouraging disputes between employers and employed. We observe that the Tarauaki News lias beon studying this Department, and, like ourselves, has come to the conclusion that it- is costly, unnecessary, and injurious. In the course of its article our contemporary says : At a cost of nearly £20,000 a year New Zealand "maintains a Department of Labour, with a secretary, a chief inspector, twenty inspectors, three assistant inspectors, four inspectors of scaffolding, and an office staff numbering twenty-nine. When the inspectors are not engaged in watching shop-keepers to f;eo that they do not keep their premises open ten minutes after the statutory closing hour, or factory proprietors to see that all tho multifarious regulations are being duly observed, they seem to bo employed in collecting data for tho secretary and his numerous staff to tabulate. Thus tho world is able to learn to a minute tiic time worked beyond tho usual hours in the various trades in the I different towns. We are informed

that last .year tho employees in the factories in New Plymouth worked 1027 hours' overtime, and that while in Wellington and Christchurch laundry work made calls upon those engaged in it for over ten thousand hours' overtime, tho people of Auckland and Dunediu had either less washing to do or they did more of it at home. . . . We are told

i with the exactness which does credit ! to the twenty inspectors and sixteen clerks how many shop assistants aro employed in the colony and what wages they receive, but the report does not enlighten us as to their age, sex, religion, and whether married or single. Nor does it state'how mauy of the assistants aro victims of the eigarotte habit, and how many take milk and sugar in their tea. An extra column or two in tho jirintod forms which employers have to fill up would furnish this and other interesting information, and incidentally it might provide employment for a few more clerks and cadets to assist Mr Tregear in carrying on the work of the Department. Parliament would, we feel sure, readily vote another thousand or two to cover the extra cost of salaries and printing. Of course the collection, dissection, and tabulation of returns is not all the work the Department has to do. It has cases to fight in the Courts, and when business is slack in that direction, the chief can always turn his attention to devising fresh means of worrying people whose misfortune it is to be compelled to employ labour, and in finding a method of preventing overindustrious employees from working too hard. At present attention is being turned to the Chinese, who have the audacity to work as long as they like -without regard to Arbitation Court awards. The matter of children bong employed luiiking cows in the dairying districts is aho agitating the mind of the Department and restrictive legislation is being

thought out. Something must, of course, bo done to earn the large salaries paid and to justify the rapidly growing cost of the Department, but wo shall bo sorry for the inspector who attempts to interfere with the milking iporations of the small farmer.. The colony has a great deal to put up with at the hands of the Labour Department, and use accustoms one to many inconveniences, but there are limits beyond which it would not be wise to go. «