Rangitikei Advocate. WEDNESDAY. SEPT. 18. 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8924, 18 September 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. WEDNESDAY. SEPT. 18. 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

WE recently referred to the grievances of the railway servants, and' pointed out that in view of the increased cost of living there was justification of their demand for higher wages. It Was also that their conditions of employment are not such as to make the service attractive or to ensure iust treatment. Another feature to which attention is being called is that promotion is more rapid and the pay higher in the Postal Department. It is pointed out that a railway servant in the first section only readies £IBO per annum after fourteen years’ service, whilst a post and telegraph servant in the same period gets £195. It takes the railway servant twenty years to reach £330,' whilst a post and telegraph servant can attain to that salary in eighteen years. A statioumaster in one of the four centres receives, say, £355 per annum, while the salary of an assistant postmaster reaches £-100. Generally, in comparing the salaries of stationmaster and postmaster, the former is very ranch behind. As to the relative responsibilities of each, there is no comparison. One particular cause of dissatisfaction among the men is that at stations whore railway and post and telegraph business is performed the work is done by the stationmaster and staff at less remuneration than a postmaster has received when the business has been taken over by the Postal Department. In this connection, what eventuated at one place in Southland recently is regarded as nothing short of a scandal. With the railway and post and telegraph ■business run together £3lO per year was paid out in wages, the statioumastor receiving £IBO, cadet £7O, and letter carrier £6O. Since the Postal Department has taken over the business £406 per annum is paid out in wages in running the postal business alone. The conclusion drawn is that under the old system the men were sadly underpaid. It almost seems as though the training of OUr Premier in the Postal and Telegraph Department has had the effect of inducing him to provide for his old service much better than for the one since placed in his charge. It is, however, becoming fairly clear that something will have to be done to improve the position of The railway servants, even if this involves higher charges to the public.

WHEN employees become imbued with the idea that if they decrease their output aud waste their time iu the factories they are not robbing the employer it indicates rather serious demoralisation. For they are robbing him just as surely as if tfiey stole from the till. He may recoup himself by charging the public more for the products of the factory, but despite this the robbery has taken place. And when a number of electors have become so indifferent to honest action it is not surprising that the representatives they elect also become lost to all sense of justice. To that may bo attributed the continuous assaults on those who have something more than their follows. The highwaymen of old, who stole hundreds from the rich aud gave pence to the poor, no doubt justified their action by the same process of reasoning as that by which our politicians set out to despoil by the aid of the law the estates of those who are considered to be possessors of too much. That which ought to protect is used to attack and rob, and the politician who can apply a tax which will rob a citizen believes lie done a rather meritorious action. The old idea that the State should charge the individual only iu proportion to service it renders him lias been entirely abandoned; yet when the State uses its power to do anything else it robs him just as surely as if its police wore sent to break open his 'safe aud remove his cash. The fact that the rich are few does not palliate the offence against honesty, aud a State which practises unrighteousness is in peril. The graduated tax proposals which are being brought forward by the Ministry arc in strict accordance with the most cherished traditions *of the highwaymen or footpads. Tho effect is the same as when those gentry lay iu wait for their victims aud compelled them to pay according to their possessions, or ho hold for ransom. It is even worse, because the traveller had a chance if ho was armed aud could j use his weapon quicker or better than his antagonist could, whereas the law is irresistible, aud its victims j have no redress

THOSE British journalists who wore misled into the belief that the Australian Premiers really wished to encourage trade with Britain are beginning to realise that the Australian tariff is hostile and will be detrimental to British interests. Some of them are attempting to excuse their error by hinting that Mr Deakin did his best to favour the Motherland, and they even try to use Australia’s hostility for the benefit of their party by ascribing the tariff to pique in consequence of what they term the “militant and contemptuous rhetoric’’ of Ministers. But Australia never intended to allow British manufactures to compete with her own in the Commonwealth. A majority of her people adhere to the curious belief that it pays them to make all the people support a few while the latter are making articles at 50 per cent greater cost than they could be bought at from outsiders. They ‘‘ keep the money in the country’’ at a cost of 30s for every 30a>so kept, and they lose the services of their workers in other and profitable occupations.