PLIGHT OF THE FARM LABORER.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1922, Page 5

PLIGHT OF THE FARM LABORER.

(To 7 the Editor.) Sir,—l have read with interest the remarks of “Cockle,’’ Atiroa, and should like him to state the amount of wages he was prepared to pay for the labor he required. I have no doubt that the wages are in proportion to the crowd he expected to answer his advertisement. As he has given advice to the unemployed, I might as one who has worked for cookies for j’ears (and again when the wage r&es or for “A Cookie’’ if he pays) add my thoughts and say: Don’t take on the black billy, or If you get a job from the ordinary cockle you will find that the wages won’t keep you in clothes, as the wear and tear of clothes on a farm is greater than at other work. Butter-fat has shown a rise of 50 pe.r cent, over pre-war rates, even this past season, hut have the wages, of the farm hand shown a similar rise? I have to beg pardon from Mr. Editor for troubling him., but the farm laborer has no one to stick up for him. He has no union, no arbitration court, and no questions relative to his welfare have ever been asked In the House. The cockies are the backbone of the country, they say, but the farm laborer is only thfi appendix, the removal of which is general at the end of the Reason, and, according to "Cockle,’’ they should, after putting in the winter on the roads, turn out in force to rush his job.—l am, etc., “COOKIE’S HACK." Ralidtu, August 14.