South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, MAY 6, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2535, 6 May 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, MAY 6, 1881.

A correspondent calls attention to the way in which appointments are filled in connection with public bodies in this neighborhood. We may mention by way of further illustration that the Levels Hoad Board, although too poor to advertise in this journal, are calling through the medium. of the Dunedin sixpenny “ wanteds ” for a clerk and overseer although some of the applicants have beenfinformed that the office is already filled and that applications are merely invited as a matter of form. With our correspondent we certainly think that the way in which candidates for public appointments are deluded, is cruel, heartless, and objectionable in the extreme. These may seem strong terms, but are they undeserved ? Owing to the peculiar position of affairs in this colony for some time past, there are large numbers of educated men, in eteryway eligible for the appointments to which we have referred, who are either out of employment or who may be said to be living by temporary stratagem. Advertisments inviting applications for permanent appointments are baits of a most tempting character.. The cost to the public bodies that insert them is a mere bagatelle alongside of the time, trouble and mortification to disappointed applicants. The poet has aptly said

Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn. We are merely calling a spade a spade when we designate these catch-penny frauds grossly inhuman. Not only are the applicants induced to spend their time and shoe-leather making all kinds of enquiries respecting the duties of the office assumed to be vacant, but their hopes are buoyed up in the expectation of securing something that will mean a lasting advance in life. We would ask the gentlemen who condescend to such pitiful artifices how they would like to be treated in a similar manner ? Is it fair to keep an appetising bait dangling before the needy when they have already appropriated it? Is it honest to invite competition after the selection has been made ? Why not honestly declare that they have made their appointment instead of trifling with the feelings of their fellow colonists, by bidding foxapplications ? If they have any conscience at all, they can hardly contemplate with equanimity the aggregate sum of human suffering so needlessly bequeathed among the disappointed billet-hunters. We ask them to reverse positions and say how they would enjoy similar treatment themselves ? How would they like, with the wolf of starvation at their door, and wives and families depending on them, to be despatched on a wild goose chase, hunting up testimonials, and straining every nerve to put a neatly written letter together—all foxnothing ? Is it not astonishing that public men should stoop to suclx incalculable meannesses ? Why should appointments be cut and dried ? Why should patronage be exercised in this stealthy underhand manner ? We say, unhesitatingly, that these mock competitions are no. credit to their promoters. They are a fraud upon the needy and the helpless—upon that portion of the community who can least afford to be cheated. The wrong that is daily inflicted by the public bodies in this colony who advertise bogus vacancies is simply incalculable. Unfortunately the victims of that wrong, numerous though they are, have no legal redress. But if anything is calculated to induce men to take the law into their own hands it is this advertising fly trap system. It may be difficult to get rid of favoritism in connection with public bodies, but when the feelings of hundreds of individuals are wantonly outraged in an altogether needless manner public sympathy for the sufferers and indignation for the perpetrators ixxay be excused if they assume an unpleasantly practical form.