The Daily News. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1903. THE ARBITRATION ACT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 258, 30 November 1903, Page 2

The Daily News. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1903. THE ARBITRATION ACT.

New Zealand has hitherto, been justly proud of its advanced labour laws, and there can bje little doubt that the labour legislation of the present administration has done much to improve the condition of the working classes. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act has Oeen a particularly beneficial measure, and although many persons are ready to condemn it an analysis of the general operation of the Act will provethat it has tended towards establishing industrial peace. But the Conciliation ami Arbitration Act, like many other laws, lias its limitations, and the measure contains anomalies that should- be removed. The latest evidence of the imperfections of the Act may be obtained •from a case recently tried at Pahiatua, in which the proprietors of the Pahiatua Herald were indicted (or a breach of the arbitration award by employing girls to set type in their printing office. As a result of the suit the proprietors were fined £5 and costs. Taken apart from the strict interpretation Of the award the case is simply ludicrous, and it cannot help but serve to bring a really useful statute into ridicule. We do not purpose to- criticise the interpretation of the -award by the learned Judge ; he made the award, and should therefore be in a position to define the permissions oc restrictions contained in its provisions, but to any sane mind it appears nothing short of downright foolishness that permission should be given to employ girls in Auckland, Taranaki, and South Island industrial districts and that permission withheld when applied to the Wellington dis-frjet. Apparently, if we proceed at our present rate, it will be very difficult indeed in a few years to define what, is a criminal act or offence under New Zealand law. As thg lft>y now stands it is an offence for a man tp employ ft female to set type in. Wanganui, yet so span as he stops across the border into Taranaki be may employ an unlimited number if he can find work for them. Is not such a state o-f affairs a perfect comedy on the principles which are supposed to form the "basis of our Conciliation and Arbitration 4ct r The principle of the Act is unquestionably to secure the payment to workmen of a reasonable wage proportionate to the profit their labour brings' to their employer, and the nature and condition of their work. But when it is sought to impose harassing and unnecessary restrictions through the machinery of the Act an injustice is done, not only to the - employers, but also to thope, who seek employment. Is it an offence against the principle oi the Act that women should be given employment ? Surely those women, who for a desire for independence, or perhaps throne.:, stress of circumstances, wish Uearn their own living by honest labour, are not to be denied the right to work because a pack of selfish, grasping men form themselves into an Industrial Union and demand that they shall be given a monopoly of the labjour market ? That the unions desire the exclusion of women from printing offices we know, but the selfishness of the unions is no justification for the Imposition of unjust restrictions against women earning an honest; livelihood. Typesetting is work that women are eminently suited for, and provided they are not called' upon to do the rougher and heavier work in the offices they give employers, on the whole, greater satisfaction than the men do. Certainly they do not '■ go out on the bust," and return unfit for work, and expect to be paid "overtime" when thp wprk has dragged behind through their pwn inefficiency. Besides, many of these young women are, apart from maintaining their independence, materially helping their relatives, and it is aa abrogation of right and justice to close the avenues of labour that open themselves to the female portion of our population. However, until the Legislature awakens to the recognition pf the fact that the principles of the statute are being violated the perpetration' of these rank injustices must continue. For the present the proprietors of the Pft'hiatua Herald must submit to be branded as law breakers and criminals, whilst the newspaper proprietors of other distrjetg employ girls by the dozen, and still maintain their respectaWlity. The law has frequently 'been called a " hass," with much justice, and certainly this latest interpretation of the work of our legislators simply bristles with sinine characteristics.

ATHLETICISM AND CULTURE, In these days when our sports grounds nnd tracks have become to such an ox tent the happy huntinggrounds of the bookie, whose operations so insidiously undermine' true sport, it is pleasing to come across an instance where the evil has not yet encroached. The lover of sport "for sport's sake" would htt-vo felt a thrill of pleasure on Thursday afternoon in attending the meeting promoted by tho boys of the High School. There he would have seen groups of earnest competitors whose only object wag to excel, uninfluenced by any sordid motive, and the sight was indeed one for congratulation, In this connection a contemporary recently pointed out the beneficial effects of sound athletic training on physique. It was pointed out that though the decline of the average physique in the citybred and under-fed and over-crowded industrial populations of the Old World cannot be denied, there i» a corresponding improvement In that of the more favourably situated middle class, and nowhere is it more conspicuous than in the rising generation'. Some interesting figures published in the Westminster Review enable us to Joriu some idea of their rate af progression';—" 4. buy cf tfl at Marl/borough 'College ' 'to weighs on an average sJlb more than a boy of the same age weighed there in 1874, and ho is also' 2in taller, Boys of 3.3, 14, 15 and 10 at Rugby School to-day are, as al Marlborougih, both taller and heavier than they were 22 years ago while boys of leverage nine-tenths of an inch tailor, but are 1 J>, '"i v . SK ' in weight. A Rugby boy of 16, who 1 goes in for gymnastics at ths pre- I m% day, is sft 7in tftJJ, and weig^

9st 3.711). Tims the Maryborough boy of 16 is four-fifths of nn inch shorter, but weighs 41b more than his confrere at Rug-by. Canon Fowler, tire headmaster of Lincoln Grammar School, docs not. seem to extract unalloyed .satisfaction from these figures. At any rate, in the scholarship record he finds that Eton, Winchester, Marlborough, and Clifton, with a total of 2549 boys, obtained in the last four years 152 scholarships ; while the day schools of St. Paul's, Manchester, Merchant Taylors', and Dulwich, with 2409 ■hoys, obtained 208 scholarships, or roughly speaking, 25 per cent, more; and on the strength of the disproportion, be asks, "To what, if not to excessive athleticism, '.-an the failure of the grout boaivlin.gt-sch.ools on the intellectual side be due ?" He does not see that ho supplies the refutation of his own argument, and gives away the ease to the athlete, when he admits very candidly that "he felt greater pleasure when he got his 'cap' at Rugby for football t'lran when he got a scholarship at Oxford."