WELLINGTON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1921, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE SPRINGBOK TOUR.. UNFORTUNATE HAPPENINGS. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, September 16. New Zealand Rugby football has not been turning its best side to London or to any other part of the world during the visit of the doughty Springboks to this country. At the very outset of the tour there was an unseemly controversy in the newspapers over the selectors’ choice of a team to represent the Dominion in the first test. The visitors well may have been astonished at this travesty of the high traditions of the game by a community that claimed to contain its leading exponents. Next came the stories in connection with the second test. They may not have been true in their worst aspect, but they were made possible by happenings which the controlling authorities at least could have discountenanced. Then there was the Nelson succession of inexcusable blunders, the last straw to the back of the South African camel, as the Springbok manager, more in sorrow than in anger, confessed. Finally, every follower of the game has been shamed by the circulation of a tale imputing to the visitors a breach of good taste of which they all have shown themselves utterly incapable.

INEFFICIENT WORKERS. One of the unfortunate features of the unemployment trouble in Wellington just now is the number of inefficient workers among the idle hands. Many of these unfortunate men, most of whom are described as laborers, seeking “heavy” or “light” work, as the case may be, hitherto have been employed upon the dullest of routine jobs and have acquired little adaptability and no initiative. Jobs of this sort are the first to run out in time of stress, and their -occupants the last to find employment in an overcrowded market. There are a thousand farm hands wanted in the Auckland province for the milking season, and not a dozen with the requisite rudimentary knowledge can be picked up among the unemployed in Wellington. Still more discouraging than this is the difficulty of finding on tlie register a man who can be trusted to do more good than harm in the garden, or to put up a rough fence in a back yard. Many a sympathetic householder has discovered this to his cost by giving a day’s work to a man sent to him from one of the relief offices.

SHEARING AND SHEARERS. From al] accounts the shearers have chosen a very inopportune time, even from their own point view, to insist upon a higher rate of pay than the Arbitration Court has awarded them. The general secretary of the New Zealand Workers’ Union, writing to the newspapers, says that the industry cannot afford to be held up, and that he expects the sheep-owners “will be compelled to capitulate in a month’s time.” But this is by no means the view of the owners of sniah and moderate sized flocks in the Wellington district. Many of them, I impelled by the financial stringency, have been arranging for weeks past to do their own shearing this year, with the co-operative assistance of their neighbors, and are confident of getting through without any serious difficulty. The owners of large flocks may have to pay the rates demanded by the men. and so far justify Mr. Grayndler’a prediction ; but their number has been de-cr-jasing year by year, as the President of the Arbitration Court showed the other day, and even in their case there will be a good deal of “free” labor available if they are pushed into a corner, PUBLIC EXPENDITURE. The Government is continuing to “retire” members from the civil service and to exercise minor economics in its efforts to lessen the volume of departmental expenditure, but it has not yet adopted any of the heroic measures urged upon it by its outside advisers. It is rumored, however, that when Mr. Massey returns he will take an early opportunity to announce a reduction in Ministers’ and members’ salaries as a prelude to a substantial cut in departmental pay. The Ministers on the spot have no statement to make on the subject, and probably the story rests on the Prime Minister’s own statement in the House to the effect that, should reductions become necessary, they would begin at the top and cease some way from the bottom. Meanwhile the expenditure upon Parliament Buildings ‘s attracting some attention from the critics, even the tolerant Dominion observing that “the furnishing of the new rooms appears to have cost a good deal of money already.” Perhaps the Government was committed to this expenditure before the slump

came, and it would not mend matters by disposing of the furniture at sale prices now.