WELLINGTON TOPICS

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3436, 16 March 1920, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS

RAILVVAYMEN’S PAY.

REPLY TO MR MASSEY.

‘-‘(special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, March 15.

Replying to the Prime Ministers’ statement in regard to railWaymen’s pa)’ Ml‘ Mack, the secretary of the Society of Railway Servants, contends that it should have been placed before the VVages Inquiry Board when that body was sitting and not reserved till after the presentation of Mr Justice Stringer-’s report which disposed of the men’s case without giving them an opportunity to appeal. waiving this point, for the time being Mr Mack maintains that if the increase in the men=’s wages were made on the basis of the increase in the cost of living, the pay of the first-class guard, taken as an example, instead of being raised from £3 9/ a week, the prewar rate. should be raised to £5 3/6, not to £4 7/. He arrives at this conclnsion by the assumption that the purchasing power of the sovereign today in comparison with pre-war times is not more than 10/, which, of course. is substantially below the calculations of the statisticians. and wishes the Prime Minister to understand that if the men cannot obtain what they want by peaceful negotiation they may be driven to take some other action. HOMELESS WELLINGTON.

Before the war it was impossible to make the average Wellington citizen believe he had “slums” at his very door almost as bad as any of those in the big provincial cities at Home, and even in these days, when -he admits there is a great scarcity of homes, he is not eager to recognise the sordid facts. "But Mr Peter Fraser. the member for Wellington Central, has been labouring for a year and more past to attract further attention to the scandal of Wellingt.on’s slums and has at least induced the “Evening Post.” to let a little light into the situation. The representative of the paper was first taken to see some of the “better class” houses. “Their timbers are so rotten,” he reported in Saturday nights’ issue, “that one could almost put a finger through them; theiniron rofis have rusted away so that any shower comes through them like water through a sieve. Their rooms are pokey and dark, with windows often out of working order. so that they are either up or down permanently; the outhouses are usually in worse condition still. being hardly. any protection against the weather.’ These are the better homes of the bad class.

THE WORSE. The description of the “worse” houses confirms everything that has been written on the subject in this column from time to time. “In the three rooms of one house,\’’ the reporter writes, “there were fifteen people—a widow and six orphan children in one, and a man and wife and six children in the other two. In nine -houses in one property owned by a public body, were fifty-nine men, women and children, including eight returned soldiers. The worst example of all seen in two hours’ tour was where a widow and six children were living in a condemned house with glass out of the Windows and the roof so leaky that the ceiling paper hung down in Curtziins across the upper rooms. Every time it blew, one or more of the remaining panes of glass went and in a house close by where the iron already had been removed from the side wall by the houseknacker lay a woman with a broken leg.’.’ And this in’ the capital city of the Dominion, which prides itself upon the enterprise of its municipal government!

COST OF LIVING. The appointment of the local tribunals which Mr Massey hopes will prove another barrier in the way of the profiteer are not arousing much local enthusiasm. The failure of the Prime Minister himself, with all his good intentions. and of the Board of Trade with all its inrltrstry and vigil— to check the continued advance in the cost of living has left the consumers with a feeling of despair. The Returned Soldiers’ Association, however. is taking the matter in hmltl and it hopes at. a public meeting to he held shortly under its auspices to -‘stil‘ 8“ apathetic public into some sort of effective action that will save the community from what. one of the promoters described as the last straw of extOl'ti<‘m._ The promised agitation has not inspiretl the patient Tl0II‘(“‘-'17" with much hope.