LABOUR DAY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8259, 12 October 1906, Page 3

LABOUR DAY.

(To the Editor). Sir,— To-day being Labour Day, it ia deplorable to note bow our Boroogh Council and business people have failed in their practical sympathy. Viewing the streets of this town a stranger would not think that to-day was the day on which all workers should be holding high oarnival to celebrate the occasion—an occasion pregnant with the history of hard-fought battles against plutocracy. By self-abnegation and denial the wroking section of the people in Masterton, on principle, lose a day's work—a small number at that—in order to emphasise the great boon, and why is it not appreciated by those who, profiting by this bard won fight, reap all its benefits and by word and example cold-water douche the very existence of the eight-hour system, if the worker is, daring employment, at the sweet mercy of a shopkeeper or other employer whose work is not within public ken; if he works in back-rooms or in shops with blinds drawn down, and if a Municipal Council permits its employees to work on Labour Day, what there for the worker? Let shupkeepers and employers iemnmber that there are still alive those who remember the ten-hour day.—Yours, etc., JOSEPH CULLEN. Masterton, October 10th.