The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1892.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4023, 28 January 1892, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1892.

At last someone, anonymous though he may be, hds ventured to defend the case of the Government in logrolling contracts at Eltetahuua, The foU lowing letter appears in the columns of the Woodville Examiner, and we have pleasure in reproducing it :

Sin,—ln your issuoofthe 20th inst. you have a sub-leader on a reported abuse of the cooperative principle, on the Woodville. Eketahuna railway. Being in Ekotahuoa a few days ago, I accidentally dropped in with a good officer who had been sent up exprcssly to investigate thia supposed abuso of the co-operative system, Asking, and obtaining leave to accompany hiin, we proceeded along the line, and made most exhaustive enquiries, the result being that the rumours, which had been going the rounds of the pros?, were found to be utterly without foundation. Perhaps, when I explain how these contracts arc let, you will agrco with me that it is an impossibility for anyone to evade the regulation whioh govern these co-operative works. In tho first place one man does not take the contract. Each of the gang ot party mußt sign his name to the specifications; the men themselves elect a headman who receives all moneys, after whioh an equal division is made. If the men choose to give the head man anything.oxtrafor bis services (perhaps he .slbo has. a little more knowledge of the work than the others) he is justly entitled to receive more compensa tion than the rest of the gang. But take notice, tho Government do not give the headman anything extra, that is left for the men themselves to do, In the eyes of the Government the men are all on equal footing. As to the men earning a pound per day, it is all moonshine, the average earning being about 7s lfld per day. I should adviso your informant to take atrip along the lino, and make a few enquiries before communicating such gross miustatcments, Apologising for trespassing so much ou your valuable space.—l am, <tc, Hear The Other Side..

There is nothing very much to object to m tliii) communication, in fact it is to a certain extent on the lines of our leader published on December 29th. We reproduce that also, because we find that subsequent evidence has confirmed thoeorrectness of the statement made therein and we are still waiting for it to be directly contradicted, Our article tan as follows: .'..'..'. There is evidence forthcoming from tho Bush that the present attempt to run publio works construction' on the co-operative prinoiple is a hideous failure; Wo have some reason to believe that the £17,000 to bo divided amongst small contracts on the Eketahuna-Woodvitlelink will only purchase about £7,000 worth of work, and that even tho £IO,OOO surplus which might be supposed to be divided as a bonus amongst a couple of hundred co-operators and thus promote settlement will find its way into the pockets of a few lucky contractors, We say ■" lucky contractors" because, although the new system is intended to abolish contractors and their profits, it virtually perpetuates them under a new name Smith j or Jones as the caso may be, is no longer a: contractor-tendering in the open market,; but a ganger who secures a fat contract at a; fancy price without competition, Tho old; fashioned tendorer was often mi "unlucky contractor," but the now Hedged ganger is per se" tho lucky contractor," and in the Bu6h thero is a regular howl about the gold mine which a few men have struck. A ganger goes to tho Engineer and asks for a contract at certain regulation prices. These ratos, we Me {old, vary from one shilling and threepence to ono shilling "XPenw per oubhj yard for earth _work, and aslocai bodies' are paying sixpence per cubic yard for similar work, it follows that the Governmeut prices are a Golgonda, A ganger arranges a contraot, we will say for £4OO worl h of work at £IOOO, a small protit of £lioPheipg attached thereto whioh he is supposed to shave, under the cooperative Bjßteni,with"thohalt, the lame, and the blind," of the bush districts. But the simple-minded ganger sees a better way of licking up the orcaui than that whioh is suggested by a benevolent Government, He selects some of the smartest pick and shovel men in the bush, men who earn the regulation wagea'of i shilling an hour or" eight bob a day," and'says" come and work for me on inyco-operotivo contract, and I'll give you nine shillings' a day. Of oou.rse a man getting one and six, or even one and three per oubio yard for earth work, pan outbid the ordinal? contractor who works for;a local body at sixpence a yard, and can osrry off all his best men, If necessary he could give-ten, twelve,' or even fifteen shillings a day to picked meUf,sod oven then turn an honest

penny out of his gangenng. Wo ara assured by a competent authority that had the work for whioh one and three and one and six is being paid been let by public tender it would have been token at soven» pence ayardj a price slightly above the rate paid by the Counties and Road Boards. The result is that tho public taxpayer is robbed to make the fortunes of a tew lucky contractors who apparently Lave had the straight tip that there was a good thing on, and have taken advantage of the opportunity, The ganger -we wish we wereone, or thateven anearrelation of ours had the good fortune to secure suoh n position—has all the advantages of on ordinary coulraotor without any of his responsibilities. Ho docs the Work, draws the money ond divideß if amongst his comrades, If the latter have an understanding with him that their share of the spoil is to be Is a day, why they are contented and he is happy. Of course it is not nice for the local bodies 11. find that the rato of wages is suddenly raiied for pioked men by these Government jobs, but they cannot help it. Doubtless, too, there are many men in tho bush who thiukthey ought to have a chip in when a big pool is divided and not allow a few lucky contractors to dear tlw stakes.. We tear that Ballance, Peddon and Co, with all their works, will yet bo cursed up hill and down dale from Eketahuna to Pukctoi, Still all this is what might bo expected from the too olevor-by half politicians who are deficient in mental ballast.. We venture to believe that the co-operative system as applied to publio works will not outlive another session and that those who wish for I a gaugorship should not delay a moment but make hay while this silly co-operative Bun : still shines.

Now we should have thought that tLis i good officer who is to be accidentally ' dropped upon but otherwise not to be discovered, would have come to us j and asked for evidence in support of , the statements we had made. Had < the inquiry been a genuine one we i should have felt it our duty to assist him to verify our allegations. We \ hear, however, that he is a Knight of Labour who is endeavouring to make the best case he can for his fraternity, who believe in the co' Operative principle. We consider the enquiry to be a iarce, and the manner 'in which the Government has interfered with labour rates in the bush is simply scandalous, Some men. profess to be making a pound a day out of the Government; others simply take the nine shillings per t'ietn whioli the gangers offer, To Illustrate ,how the coddling of the labourer works we might cite an instance of a pair of worthies who were employed some time ago by a local contractor at eight shillings a day. When the ministry arranged for work for the unemployed in the bush they threw up their job and in the guise of wandering bush minstrels accepted a crumb from tho Government table, They touud that by working on the unemployed racket they made 14s per diem as against 8s on the legitimate basis, One word more as to the Member for Maslerton's connection with the railway co-operative system. We believe he took down the names of applicants for work in Masterlon, that tho, only available forms of application were at his offioe, that these forms were taken by his clerk to Eketabuna and handed over to the charge of Mr Toohill, a local resident who represents himin that neighbourhood. Subsequent to this an officer of the Government appeared on the scone and allocated eleven contracts between the applicants introduced to nimby"" lß Member for Masterton and his agentS and friends. Virtually we are assured the ™P' e of these rich contracts which were calculated to givo each worker on them n pound a day were distributed amongst the immediate friends of thj Member for Masterton, Wo affirm that thousands of pounds have been given as a bonus to certain bush residents through these contracts, and'that geneval indignation prevails throughout the bush districts