TUB SLAUGHTERMEN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 6 December 1912, Page 5

TUB SLAUGHTERMEN.

[To The Editor.?

Sir,—l would like onco again, through the medium of your paper, to reply <o more misrepresentations concerning the slaughtermen—given in the. form of advice by F. R. Bust ex-secretary of the Auckland Slaughtermen's Union. Mr F. R. Bust and the props of this country seem "bent on advising the slaughtermen not to ho led by "agitators," and not to cripple the industry. Does it never GT.rike the press that tho slaughtermen have studied all these points for months, and that they recognise thai if tho export companies are not doing well, the slaughtermen also are in the same, boat? Mr Bust states that many business men would ho glad to take the weekly wage as their week's takings. Bid Mr Bust ever ask any of the i business men if they would do tho : same with the slaughterman's yearly average wage? And also if iJie/ v< uld like tho constant accidents, tho soreness and weariness of body, the nauseous surroundings of tho slaughterman's daily lot? I am sorry to see Mr F. 11. Bust does not agree wit" Mr Cooper regarding tho increase of the export of lamb, and neither do the slaughtermen of .the Dominion. We quito agree with Mr F. R. Bust that it will decrease after a certain period. I think that lids .'s ;• convincing argument in favour of all tho demand's that might exist. The public sympathy that Mr F. R. Bust speakabout —do tho public kn<>;v that if ' (tho public) is glad to cat the quality of stock rejected by the companies, and that any butcher in business has great difficulty in securing primestock, even in the Wairarapa? Mr F. R. Bust cannot have taken any j notice of Mr Angliss's (head of tho firm of Angliss and Co.) evidence \ given before a commission sitting in I Melbourne two months ago, in which he stated that in tho slaughtering for export in Australia, the companies are handicapped by paying higher rates for slaughtering than in New Zealand. Tho rates varied from £1 ' 17s (id ti: £1 7s 6d, and the average Australian product fetches less than New Zealand. Yet he says that they can show a profit that fully justifies J them continuing the export trade. I Taking this statement of Mr Angliss' j as a guide, tho companies of New! Zealand must bo "in clover," as they I get the highest price, and pay leso» wages. Re the advice to slaughtermen to stick to the Arbitration Court —well, they have never gained anytiling from the Court. Not that they do not. believe in, arbitration, hut they have no faith in the presiding judge. In closing, I might state thta the slaughtermen are just as capahle, if not more so, than Mr Bust or the man in the street of minding their own business, and that is their advice to F. R. Bust. —I am, etc. i (on behtlf of the slaughtermen), JAS. H. BTSHOP. Clareville. Dec-ember 3, IDI2.