AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3637, 25 November 1920, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Received 10.50 a.m. CIVIL SERVANTS WIN. SYDNEY, This Day., The Federal Government has decided to pay the Federal Civil Servants a basic wage of £4 4s from November

< MR. HUGHES HONOURED.

•' Received -11.10 a.m. ■: • SYDNEY, This Day. Mr. Hughes was presented with an address of gratitude and a cheque for £25,000, for services rendered to the soldiers and the Empire. DESTRUCTION OF RATS AND MICE Received 11.20 a.m. SYDNEY, This Day. Giving, evidence before the Select Committee on Agriculture, the French bacteriologist, M. Francis "Ray, a re : prescntative of the Pasteur Institute, said he could have combated tne recent plague of mice with a virus which was on sale in France. The virus produced a disease in rats and mice which killed them in from eight to fourteen days. He also claimed that he could success-. fully inoculate pigs against hog cholera and swine fever.

.NATIONALIST CONFERENCE. Received 11.10 a.m. SYDNEY, This Day. Mr. Puller, addressing the Nationalist Conference, attacked disloyalists. He said: "We want Australian sentiment with a big dash .'of British;:-not that spurious sentiment distilled by Germany and blended with Ireland.* * The Conference passed a resolution against increased Parliamentary salaries, both/ State and Federal, "and also favoured a return to single electorates with preferential voting.

THE BASIC WAGE. Received 10.30 a.m. MELBOURNE, This Day. According to memorandum supplied to Mr. Hughes by the chairman of the Basic Wage Commission, the suggested basic wage of £5 16s per ..week for-all male workers was based on the typical family of a man, his wife and three children. This meant that all families with more than three children would suffer privation, those' with less than three children would*receive more than a living wage, and the unmarried man would get what would support himself, a wife and three children. Working upon the 1911 census of population, the number of children per head of male population averaged .90 so that under the existent basic wage industries were paying for 450,000 non-existent wives and 2,100,000 non-fexistent children. Again, there was the question of the automatic increase in the basic wage every quarter, so that the sovereign would always .purchase the same ■amount would always purchase■'• thje same amount of commodities. With every increase in wage would come an increase in prices, because Australia did not produce-the required wealth under these automatic increases. By November, 1921, the basic wage would have risen-' to £8- 12s (id; On the strength of these figures, Mr. Hughes declared the problem to be insoluble, and the position impossible. The worker, was no -better off from increasing wages because of increasing prices.