MAKURI NOTES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3993, 19 December 1891, Page 2

MAKURI NOTES.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) Mosquitoes here are terribly bad, and some men say they will go out. They are bitten all day and can't work. If they do go, the contractors will be unable to carry out their contracts. The unemployed are being set to work on the (Jorge. I must tell you that the recent article in the Wellington Post seems rather out of it. You remember some of the Makairo unemployed complained they were not paid fairly, and a Mr Beere was sent up to report. The Post says the Government will concede half the men's demands. Now the facis, as believed in Pahiatua, are : (1). The work done was calculated from cross sections now held by the Department. (2). Mr Beere went up with some drunken companions, not himself, however, actually intoxicated. He could not have measured the work, because after it is done the cross section cannot be got at. (3). Mr Beere never had any cross sections, nor any data to go on. (4). Mr Beere's report has never been published. I have tried to get some information from Mr Beaney, in charge of the unemplojed, but he won't tell me anything, and perhaps he is right. !t is commonly thought that when lis work is challenged, and reported in, the report should be published, fthe Government really pay the unemployed anything, it is as good as laying that the original measurements vere wrong, and is a great slur on the ocal officers in charge. The event in Pahiatua has been fix Buick's mission to promote the National Liberal Federation. He is . delightful surprise after the ex>erience we haye had of local Demoiratic oratory. No doubt the member or Mastertou does his best, but it sn't very good, and when he calls imself a self-made man one is reminded of the American saying that e is " dreadfully like the sort of man mt sort of man would be sure to take." Mr Buick"is youug, nice oking, to all appearances a gentlean, and when people call him a baker" one naturally remarks not just what one would take him for," t " I guess they have 8 good article bread where he works." He made pleasant speech, admirably devered, without a shade of clap trap [ ; vulgar abuse. Bat it was in one tedious. He had nothing to say. All was comprised in one statement, that we had to give him each £1 to fiifht the Liberal battle. He stated that if a man could not afford £1 he could join the Knights of Labour and in some mysterious way affiliate through them, and one vote would be given for every ten men who so joined. Much would be made of this! In ordinary elections Mr Buick is horrified if a big squatter has two votes, while his shepherd has only one, but he thinks it all right that in a voluntary association, a man who pays £1 should have one vote, and a man who pays Is Gd only a tenth of a vote ! Every house in Pahiatua ia cram full, some containing more families than one, and if a dozen were vacant . they would be let in a couple of days. |