The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1918. FIXING THE MAXIMUM WAGE.

Taihape Daily Times, 14 February 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1918. FIXING THE MAXIMUM WAGE.

With which is incorporated The Tai hnpo Post and Waimarino News).

The Minister for v Public Works is, sve think, a very poor judge of human nature; he has a blurred vision o t what obtains at the present time, and ne has not yet discovered the trenc of social and political progress rliroughout the world that is giving .nest earnest thought to the -world’s statesmen and economists. K Mr. Fraser’s saying it would accomplish all he assorts, then the future .liter the war would be freed from all

;he distributing phenomena men of deep thought all over the world regard with such profound gravity. How fervently we wish with all other employers of labour that we could say that we will only pay an exact number of shillings per day for labour, for then, there would be some possibility of evolving a stable basis for a settled state of future operations, but we cannot, and the future remains obscure. We are constantly having to adjust ourselves to new and hairassing conditions. What is most distressing is, that despite Mr. Fraser’s assertion, our expei’ience is precisely similar to that of this country’s great army of producers and manufacturers. Will the fact of the Government coming into an extended employment of labour mend matters or render them more dangerous and disastrous? The Minister told a deputation at Auckland his problem was labour, not money. There would be a great scarcity of labour during the war, but he was determined not to pay men more than eleven shillings a day_ It is gratifying to know that the Government can fix the price of something. It has had two or three years at trying to regulate the cost of living, to fix the price of bread, of meat, of house-rent, and all those other commodities upon which, we have hitherto understood, the wages of labour must, of necessity, hinge. Mr. Fraser has discovered the magic wand, however, and its first wave is going to put our labour troubles into oblivion. We would much prefer that he swished it round amongst shipping profiteers, and gave our producers some hope of seeing their products being got away to market, then he might try its waving effects in the haunts of meat trusts and free the masses of labour from the parasites that are taking their very life’s blood. It would be just glorious to Avatch the effect of a wave or two OA r er the land policy; to see square mile upon square mile of unproductive and unsettled land instantly dotted oA’er with thousands of happy homesteads; to see the produce teeming in to congested railAvays from the country that Avas hitherto feeding one sheep, or no sheep, to the mile; to sec the resultant boom of business and the mushroom groAvth of toAvns; to be surprised Avith rapidly-vanishing taxation, a taxation that is now looming over this land, a pall so black, heavy and dense that no ray of light can penetrate. The Hon. Mr. Fraser is merely taking ns a trip into fairyland in his talk about fixing the price of labour, he can no more do that than find a back door into heaven. We really wish he could do both, for there is much more satisfaction in working out our des-

tiny in the old well-tried way than in starting the fairyland wand business. Mr. Fraser’s statement that he “could” employ ten thousand men now on public works if they were available is as virtueles as his expressed determination to fix the rate of wages. If the Minister had said he “would” employ ten thousand men now he might have given some hope and satisfaction to his Auckland audience, because he would have indicated that the Government had repented of its determination to have no public works in progress during the war. For the country to have got full benefit from the cessation of public works the Minister of Public Works should have gone into recess without pay, leaving a staff just sufficient to carry on; but it was ever the case, all the tophamper is retained while all that for which it exists is cut away. The Minister was just trying his diplomatic attainments on the ’Auckland people when he told them he “could” employ ten thousand men on public works. We arc more modest in our pretensions than the Minister, but we believe we could employ twice or three times the number in preparing land for settlement, and in settling the land when it was prepared without involving the country in' any financial difficulty, and that great Reform journal, the New Zealand Herald, has expressed a similar opinion, and it gave the Minister a rather severe castigation in that connection. The Hon. William Fraser is the round peg in a square hole, and it is obvious that he can never fit it. The Auckland deputation asked for some measure of progress, and the Minister simply told them what he could do, not what he would do, about the greater activity in public works. He did tell Aucklanders that he would not pay more than eleven shillings a day for labour, but that need only be regarded seriously if the cost of living is not adjusted to such a wage, and there Is not another politician in the House or in the country that is capable of taking Mr. Fraser’s place in the Public Works Department.