CONDITION IN TRANSVAAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 81, 1 May 1909, Page 6

CONDITION IN TRANSVAAL.

Sonic interesting facts are published by the Star which have been forwarded to a friend by iui Aucklnnder at present in the Transvaal. With regard to wages, lie states that the lnine-innnagcrs get from .t!i.) to £4o'per mo:ith; working carpenters or timber men and such like 18s to 20s per day; shift trimmers and men to look after the boys 12s per shiit. In some mines the shift is eight hours, and in others up to nine and'a-balf. He adds: "The money looks big, but it is mi bigger than smaller money paid in other countries. So many things are so much dearer than in New Zealand. Butter is Is Oil per lb, eggs ,'te lid per dozen, and bacira Is lid per lb. Bread, meat, and milk are about your price, but lots of thing* arc very dear lierc, and it seems a very hard job to keep any of the wages. Houses are very poor and very dear in the Transvaal. The conditions about the mining towns are such that people who have lived in Auckland would never put up with. Mining is the only thing here, and everything else seems very dead. At Pretoria 1 saw 52 shops einptv in three streets (one a very long street): but everything there was dead slow with one exception, criminals, who have increased by a thousand a year since 11102. and now there arc 0000 criminals in,a small place like that. Carpenters working at other jobs (not in the mines) arc getting 12s (id per day. and some, I hear, work for less. There arc plenty of white men working on the railways for lis 4d a dav, and arc very glad to get it. 'Men in Xcw Zealand work long enough, but here tli"y. beat them out and out. I have been to the graves of our boys who died in the war, and find that in every case they ait' well eared for, with stones and iron crosses with name and age and where they came from inscrilied thereon."