*THE
WORKER*
BRISBANE,
JUNE 1, 1895.
The
World of Labour.
MANUKA station has commenced shearing.
A SHOP Assistant's Union has been established recently
on Charters Towers.
COOMEEMARTIN, Evesham, and Bowen Downs stations all
start shearing about June 1.
ONLY one boot scab has arrived in Brisbane since the
commencement of the strike, and he has received due attention.
THE Hughenden Branch A.W.U. Is asking members to deposit
£300
as capital with which to extend the co-operative store.
Boot operatives in
the South are warned that the strike in the boot trade still
continues owing to the employers refusing a conference.
A MOVEMENT is on
foot amongst the boot employe's to establish a co-operative boot
factory. Such a factory should be very successful.
SINCE the
establishment of the drapery department the Hughenden Amalgamated
Workers Union Co-operative Store has done a much larger business.
THE appointment of
T. B. Clegg as clerk in charge of the new Department of Industry and
labour, New South Wales, is hailed with a good deal of satisfaction.
THE Adelaide Trades
Council and the Eight-Hours Committee have purchased an allotment of
land for £1200
and intend to erect a Trades hall on the site.
THE object of a
Woman's Trade Union recently formed at Hawick, Scotland, is “to
prevent them from working at an unsatisfactory wage for the benefit
of their men folk.”
PASSMORE Edwards, an
admirer of John Burns, offered some time ago to make the Labour
agitator independent by settling £10,000
on him. Burns refused the offer.
THE first meeting of
the Intercolonial General Council of the Australasian Federation of
Labour will be opened in Sydney on the 11th
June. All the colonies have been invited to co-operate.
A DISPUTE has
occurred in the boot trade in Adelaide owing to the introduction of
improved machinery. The disputing parties, both employers and
employed, have agreed to submit the matter to a board of
conciliation.
THERE is no freedom
of contract between a fasting man and a full man. The full man can
wait; the hungry man cannot wait, - JUSTIN M'CARTHY, For “fasting
man” read employer.
LORD Salisbury in a
recent speech said, “ A black and impassable stream of distrust
divides the ranks of half-starved workers from the benefits of
capital.” His Lordship, as a slum landlord, might have added, “and
such fellows as I swell the stream.”
THE police of
Melbourne have arrested thirty children found selling matches in the
streets between 10 o'clock and midnight. The state of society which
compels fathers and mothers to sweat their offspring by making them
sell matches after 10 o'clock at night must be rotten to the very
core.
A STOREKEEPER in
Hughenden wants to know if Neddy Neighbour is a “scab” bootmaker.
The secretary of the Boot Trade Union has been asked to supply the
information, The Boot employe's strike would soon be at an end if all
storekeepers would ask for the names of the union boot manufacturers.
THE Maryborough
Butchers' Employes, their families and friends, to the number of 150
or so, celebrated their annual holiday on Queen's Birthday at
Cooloolah paddock, Saltwater Creek road. Mr. Wisemann, the secretary
of the union, and others worked very hard and successful to make
everybody completely happy.
AN unpleasant idea
of the present distress was given at a meeting of the Strand Board of
Guardians. Mrs. Evans said that to her knowledge no fewer than four
University men, each one with an M. A. degree, had been obliged to
turn out and try to earn a living by selling newspapers in the Strand
and adjoining streets. - Tit-bits.
THE Victorian
Government went in for cutting down the pay of the Naval Brigade. The
consequence is that Victoria now has no Naval Brigade, as every man
downed tools. The officers are not included amongst the men. There is
some talk of the Government going in for cheap labour to man the guns
which only protect the interest of the fat man.
THE boot
manufacturers have refused to confer with their employe's on matters
in dispute. The municipal councils of South Brisbane and North
Brisbane should therefore at once empower their officials to arrange
for municipal boot factories in which the men employed would receive
a fair rate of wages. The public would then receive the best of
boots – on brown-paper leather – at low rates and there need be
no sweating.
HALF-A-CROWN an hour
is the ordinary pay for a driver actually at work under water in the
Thames, and 1s.an hour while he is above, tending a comrade working
below. The men work in turns, four hours above and four hours below
in the course of the day, and they can make about four guineas a
week. Six pounds a week is not an unusual sum for one of them to
earn; indeed, that seems to be the general rate for good men when
things are brisk. - Answers
THE Victorian
Protection League is to be complimented on being the first to move
along the right track. At a recent meeting of the League the
following resolution was unanimously carried:
That this conference
of the council of the Protectionists' Association and representatives
of various industries heartily affirms the principal of the minimum
wage, in order to ensure to the full the benefits of protection; and
that this conference affirms the urgent necessity for an amendment of
the factories Act embodying this principle.
In Queensland the
gentry who the Protection show are all firm believers in freedom of
contract so far as Labour is concerned, and wage earners are often
“used” by them without any benefit to themselves. Now here is a
golden opportunity. Let the toilers ask the Queensland Protection
League to show its sincerity by not only passing such a resolution as
that adopted by the Victorians, but also assist Labour to carry it
out by abolishing sweating, sub-contracting, and establishing such a
minimum wage as the unions agree is a fair one. In other words, do
away with freedom of contract in labour in order that wage earners
may have a decent living.
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