Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1910 — NEW ZEALAND’S WAY. [ARTICLE]

NEW ZEALAND’S WAY.

Ruling: of a Wise Judge Where Girls Demanded I.lvina Wages. In distant New Zealand not long ago there was a match factory in which a number of women worked for low wages. After fruitless appeals to the owner for better wages the workers resorted to force. They did not strike. In New Zealand you do not have to strike, because in that country a substitute for the strike is provided by law. To this substitute, a court of arbitration, the women took their grievance. The employer in his answer declared, just as employers in this country might have done, that his business would not stand an increase in wages. He explained that the match industry was newly established in New Zealand and that until it was on a secure basis factory owner’s could not afford to pay high wages. The judge ordered an Inquiry. In this country it would have been an' inquiry into the state of the, match industry. There it was an inquiry into the cost of living in the town where the match factory was located. And then the judge summoned the factory owner to the court of arbitration and this is what he said to thq man, says a writer in Hampton’s magazine: “It is Impossible for these girls to live decently or healthfully on the wages you are now paying. It is of Jthe utmost importance that they should have wholesome and healthful conditions of life. The souls and bodies of the young women of New Zealand are of more importance than your profits, and If you cannot pay living wages it will be better for the community for you to close your factory. It would be better to -send the whole match Industry to the bottom of the ocean and go baek_to flints and firesticks than to drive young girls into the gutter. My award is that you pay what they ask.” Does that sound like Justice to you? It does to me. v. Another great trouble .“is, so many people are liable to catch the wild, unreasoning mob spirit, and hang an Innocent man.