1893 Wage reduction

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane November 18, 1893

THE EDITORIAL MILL.

What wages some of the storemen in Brisbane receive: The writer knows one who has a wife and three children, making five persons, to support on ₤5 per month and pay rent. Originally his wages were 7 pounds per month, but his employer told him to take ₤5 per month or leave.

Thus a correspondent. The case referred to is only one of hundreds. Employers – like the mass of humanity – are very like sheep, one jumps, all jumps. It is only necessary for a few unscrupulous employers, anxious to become rapidly rich, to lower the rate of wages, and talk of the depression of trade as an excuse, for dozens of others to follow their example, failing to observe that such a course of action aggravates and does not in the remotest degree alleviate any depression that may exist. According to the census taken on the 5^th April, 1891, there were in this colony 123,983 males and 85,248 females between the ages of 15 and 50. The greater number of these persons are wage-earners. For instance about 9000 are domestic servants, 4000 tailors and dressmakers, 1500 boot and shoemakers, 2000 seamen, 4000 carpenters, joiners , &c., 2000 navvies, &c., 6000 farm servants and agricultural labourers, and so on, nearly all wage – earners, having dependent on them father, mother, sister or brother, son or daughter, showing that the great proportion of Queenslander's population of 400,000 are persons whose power to purchase goods is restricted by the amount of wages they earn. These “working classes,” as a whole, of necessity, live up to what they earn, consequently if certain employers reduce the tailors, and others the domestic servants, carpenters, &c., it necessarily follows that their ability to purchase goods is curtailed by the amount of the reductions, whatever it might be.

The carpenter has therefore to do without his new hat for a while longer, the servant girl without her new dress, the tailor without his new boots, thus decreasing all round the trade of the dressmaker, bootmaker, hatter, &c., &c., and making things intensely uncomfortable for nearly all persons in the community who are not capitalists and have to work for a living. These are facts which do not seem to be taken sufficient notice of by the average shopkeeper and working manufacturer who are nearly always the most bitter opponents of the agitators who wish to raise the wages of the working classes all round. Business was never so brisk and Australia never so prosperous as when the disagreeable agitators were supposed to “boss the show.” Employers might recollect this, and bear in mind also that reductions in wages precede depression, and that an increase in the rate of wages precedes prosperity.