THE Wairarapa Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1910. THE "DOWN-TRODDEN" SHEARER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10108, 1 October 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1910. THE "DOWN-TRODDEN" SHEARER.

The shearers of New Zealand . and Australia are not the over-worked, sweated, ill-fed, cheated, downtrodden mortals that some people would have us suppose. They are, indeed, about as well paid as any section of the skilled-labouring class in the Southern Hemisphere. They eat well, sleep well, dress well, and extract about as much honey from the hive of industry as the average man, not excluding the small farm-, er. A writer in the Sduth Australian Register states'that some exhilarating returns are in course of preparation, which show that some shearers make fat incomes, and that others make lean ones, that their cooks make wages such as few Prime Ministers would despise and no Bishops would refuse, and that even the poor down-trodden rouseabout makes a respectable competency. One seldom hears any murmuring from the hardest worked men of the lot, the wool-pressers. Their tasks vary in accordance with the nature of the pressing plant, but nobody of a practical turn of mind would question the tough nature of their contract. The 1 spread of machinery is annually increasing, but it looks as though, in the near future, electricity would largely take the place of steam. It is not likely to lead to any better work; second cuts are, if anything, more in evidence than ever, and many an owner declares that better work was done years ago by the hand shears than is the case now with combs and cutters. The fact of the' matter is that no manager or overseer has the same amount of control over his team that he once had. Raddling ill-shorn sheep and-penalising shearers for bad work belong to the past. Now, if a man objects to the way in which-his sheep' are being tomahawked and his wool chopped about, lie can do little more than sue for breach of agreement, and put aside a fleece or two, and possibly a halfflayed sheep, as exhibits in support of his claim in some court of law,

There may have been room to tone down the'bully-ragging methods of some men over the board, but matters now seem to hare gone to the

opposite exti-eme, and shearers are in a large measure their own judges of good or bad workmanship. In : few sheds does one now see the good { old brownie cake of years ago at the j numerous lunching and tea-ing in- j t.erval, cakes which would bo a ere- j dit to any city pastry-cook, fruit cakes with a coating of cocoanut or almond icing, are more in vogue. Years ago all that a cook needed to be'able to do was to make an Irish stew, to bake bread, and cook mutton, and to fight. Now choice fricassees and savoury dishes of all descriptions are imperatively necessary; but, on the other hand, even an elementary knowledge of boxing is no longer needed. To clear over £IOO for six weeks' work is what has been accomplished by a modern shearers' cook.