The Daily News. TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1913. THE WEEKLY WAGE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 243, 4 March 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1913. THE WEEKLY WAGE.

Mrs. W. P. Reeves lias always been foremost in helping to promote the domestic life, and she has grown to be recognised as quite an authority on matters pertaining to her sex, chief among which is. of course, the care of the household. Recently she has been conducting an interesting investigation in London with regard l<> the methods of the life of families which are required to exist on an income of CI a week. There are tens of thousands of married workers in the great metropolis who do not earn more than an average of £SO or £6O a year, yet who somehow manage, through fair weather and foul, to find lodgings, food and clothing for themselves and their wives and children. Mrs. Reeves (pioles several typical budgets to show how the miracle is performed, and she reached the conclusion, as other students of domestic economy had done before her, that the sins of the employers were being visifed upon the nation in the form of discontented, semi-efficient workers, and ill-nourished, poorly-developed children. But the real illumination was provided by some of her critics, who. apparently, hastened to show that the poorly-paid worker was really a foolish, improvident fellow, who "squandered his money" and "neglected to think of his future." "Why." asked a typical Tory, on-respondent, "does such a man marry

at all until lie lias secured his economic position? Why does lie not save or wait until his earning power is increased?" Mrs. Reeves replies that the man probably would never he -riven more money, and that he had 710 possible means of assuring his position against unemployment. He had either to marry on his £1 a week or remain a bachelor. Then the correspondent, in reply, explained his ideas in more detail. "It is reasonable to suppose," he said, "ihat a single man of twenty yeais of age could, without undue hardship, save half the wage 011 which he i< prepared, as things are, to support, however inadequately, a wife and family. By thirty, therefore, which is probably quite as early as the average bourgeois can all'ord io marry, our bachelor would have live years' wages in hand. Jnvested at the very low rate of 3s per cent, this would mean an addition to the wage of 15 per cent., or three shillings on an it come of a pound. There would also he ; trifle of interest upon interest, and, if his wife had done the same, the increment would be further increased up to, it may be, double!.'' Every worker, in fact, under this delightful philosophy, is expected to become his own capitalist, if he will only spend the years of his youth under conditions of Spartan economy, and presumably without rcereation or holiday. The only alternative, as tins "friend" of the worker is prepared to admit, is the fixing of a fair minimum wage Ivy the State, but compulsion of that kind, he illogically argues, 1 would be ''just the old poor law." Fortunately, we are not troubled with this form of comparative poverty in New Zealand, but there is a lesson for the workers even here in the existing conditions at Home. The cost of living may be high in the Dominion, but wages are correspondingly good, and the attitude of labor throughout Australasia of late years lias not been of such a nature as to impart confidence to either the manufacturing or the producing interests. The old fable of the dog who dropped his" bone to snatch at its shadow in the water has a singular application to tlie industrial position at the moment.