World of Labour July 6, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, JLUY 6, 1895.

The World of Labour.

THE Tambo shearers' ball in aid of the hospital realised £17 10s.

GENERAL Booth is arranging to send a colony of 10,000 persons to Canada.

THE profits of the South Australian Land Company for the year amount to only £21,000.

A RUMOUR is current at Thursday Island that another cargo of 200 Japanese is expected to arrive at an early date.

MOST of the mines at Johannesburg, South Africa are worked by coloured labour, wages three pounds per month and found.

THE introduction of improved machinery in the bootmaking trade in Adelaide will likely throw idle a large number of bootmakers at an early date.

A MELBOURNE boot manufacturer asserts publicly that 40 per cent of the light work of the boot trade in that city is made by “sweated” labour.

“EMPLOYERS will get cheap labour if they can. It is the business of the State to prevent them getting it so cheaply that they impair the future race by the process.” - PROFESSOR ROGERS.

About 30,000 workmen in Wales (Eng.) have been thrown idle through the closing of a number of tin-plate works in consequence of the depression in trade. They have got freedom of contract with a vengeance.

The minimum wage question is taking fast hold in Victoria. At a recent meeting of the Caulfield Shire Council a resolution providing that a special clause be inserted in tender specifications compelling all contractors to pay a minimum wage was adopted.

THE Japanese contract labourers imported by the Queensland sugar planters are not obliged to return to Japan on the expiry of the contract. Many of them are now being employed in work in some of the northern mills which was formerly done by white men.

AWAY out in Thargomindah, when the local Rabbit Board required a superintendent, no less than 100 applications were received for the position. From this it would appear that the unemployed in the back blocks of Queensland are about as plentiful as the rabbits are.

WHEN the Melbourne Age says: “Very fitting therefore was it that the Protectionist Association should move a formal declaration for a minimum wage,” Queensland people should begin to doubt the economies of the local press which is against the State stepping in to prevent the payment of starvation rates.

MR. H.C. Jones has tendered his resignation as secretary of the Wellington (N.Z.) Trades Council owing to ill-health, and the following resolution was passed: “This Council in accepting the resignation of Mr. H.C. Jones, regrets exceedingly that the state of his health has necessitated this step, expresses its best wishes for his speedy restoration to health, and places on record its appreciation of the many valuable services he has rendered while holding position as secretary to the council.

THE Rockhampton Bulletin very pertinently remarks: “A number of people in Brisbane appear to have convinced themselves that unless they are permitted to draft a code of regulations for the meat industry, and have them enforced by Act of Parliament, disaster awaits it. Curious to say, the same people are prominent on occasions in denouncing the folly of Socialism, and the madness of the State attempting by an army of inspectors and a mired of bye-laws to conduct the industries and regulate the enterprise of the people of the colony.

IT has been publicly stated that when the Bank of Australasia took over the Bri Bri sugar plantation last August there were six months wages due to the Kanakas employed on it, and no one could be found to pay them. The matter was brought under the notice of the Colonial Secretary, who gave it as his opinion that the mortgages was the person who should pay the wages. This the bank refused to do, and it is now said that the Government, which is very kind to banks and sugar planters, has decided to pay the Kanakas their wages in full – a matter of £400.

A CASE was recently brought before the police court at Hawthorn (Vic.) in which a labourer sued an employer for wages. From the evidence given in court after the work was finished the wages amounted to £1 8s. 6d., and the employer told the workman to make out a receipt for same, which he did. The employer then snatched the receipt out of his hand and gave him 2s. 6d., telling him he was fully paid. Notwithstanding that the employer's brother did a bit of swearing on his behalf the magistrates gave a verdict to the workman for the full amount less 2s. 6d.

A MEETING was held recently in Melbourne to support the claims of the operative bakers to have clauses inserted in the Amended factories Act, which is shortly to be introduced in the Victorian Parliament, providing for an eight hour day, the prohibition of employe's boarding or lodging in bakery premises, dealing with the age of apprentices, and establishing a minimum wage of 45s. per week of 48 hours. One of the speakers in describing the condition under which bread was made in some of the sweating dens said that the sanitary arrangements were of the worst kind imaginable, and that the temperature of the bakeries was usually 110 degrees.

AT a meeting of the Auckland Trades and Labour Council a circular was received from the Dunedin Knights of labour regarding the issue of a colonial newspaper in the interests of labour. The Secretary was instructed to reply that the Council could not entertain the scheme as it had already (in conjunction with other Labour Councils in the colony) a similar scheme under consideration. As I have said before, adds our N.Z. special, our getting of an organ is, like the cockney barber's business, in the air. Whether they can screw them on to the solid floor of a printing office is also a problem of them, me fragile composition. In the mean time, what's the matter with the WORKER as an active advocate?

LETTERS of Naturalisation have been issued to the following in Wellington, N.Z.: Otto Edward True, mariner, Waiweto; Joe Tie, gardener, Danevrike; Wong Ah Nui, cook, Wanganii; and Wah Kee, storekeeper, Woodville. Just take another look at that second to last name and compare it with the place he dwells in. No wonder it gave Tom Bracken the laureate of Maoriland, an attack of the old Paddy Murphy afflatue. Our special often remembers the verses, but they appeared a few weeks ago in the Otago Witness. Time was when it was funny to remind your audience of the Chinaman who became a “Merchant” in tendering for a contract; but a Moari Chinky – oh, shades of Brilliance.

A LONDON woman who takes an interest in the girls employed in the factories of the Modern Babylon, and who occasionally visits them during their working hours, has been relating to the Weekly Dispatch the dodges and tricks which employers resort to to defeat the objects of factory legislation. “She was on one occasion in a workroom where there were double the proper number of hands at work for the cubic space in the room. Suddenly the word was passed from outside that the inspector was coming down the street. Instantly half the girls were hurried up into bedrooms and cupboards and locked in. The inspector came in, glanced at the size of the room, counted the number of heads, and went out satisfied.”