Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1895. A CRUEL BILL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5062, 27 June 1895, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1895. A CRUEL BILL.

We liavo been looking through a ' cruel Bill placed 011 the table by our politienl Nero, Mr Reeves, for divorcing a large proportion of the n working men of the Colony from if employment on contract work (1 throughout the Colony. Our Nero I- has been responsible already for throwing out of work thousands of men in New Zealand, but not content with this he thirsts for more victims, and if his present ingenious Bill becomes law, he will, while he fiddles, send to the wall hundreds of men who now command useful employment, We published a resume of this cruel Bill yesterday. Under i,t, when a contract is let, .the tenderer Ims to state what rate of wages he will pay to his hands, and to pledge himself that this rate is the standard wage l> of the district. Assuming that seven s shillings a day be the schedule price, ° the contractor lias to carry out the work on this basis. What is the inevitable result P To save himself, the contractor can only employ the very best men in the district, all inferior hands must be discarded, and even lads, who have not attained their full strength, must be boye cotted, In practice, the Bill would e disfranchise two-thirds or threefourths of the working men in the Colony. We have divine authority for the law that men shall eat bread by the sweat of thoir lirow, but the impious politicians of to-day dofy the Almighty, and ) declare tlmt the larger number 1 of men in the Colony shall not • eat bread, and that it shall be illegal for thorn to obtain employment by which they have hitherto earned it. Of course eyen our political Noro • cannot carry all before liini in this matter. He can bring the horse to the water—the steed he wants to lead is the employer of labour-but be cannot make him drink. If the cruel Bill passes and employers of labour are compelled to pay a fixed uniform rate of wages on every job, r we venture to prophecy that this fixed uniform rate will fall to five shillings a day. Our political Nero i will never rest till he has brought ' j the wages of-workingmen down'to 1 ' this level, They are lower now than ' tliey ever were'before during the ] past thirty years and if one man ' more than another has brought 1 about this state of things it has been 1 ;the;ffinister tigainst Labour, Still a ' 1 'good many men believe'in him. He 1 always holds a bunch of carrots in j [ front of their noses and 'although s j they have, never reached this dainty ' • yet with' their teeth, they nlwr.ys 1

fancy that they are going to get a ; bite. : :'J.n. China if a .boy shows some personal defect which is likely to handicap him in competing on equal terms for- a living, it is customary, we belieye, tokillhim straight away. Our political Nero does not go quite ns far as this, but by his labour legislation, he cuts him off from, employment. In the one case, the less capable labourer is killed straightaway, in the other,he is starved,; Is the latter, after all, ' the more merciful method ?