TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2664, 20 November 1909, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The proposal put forward in Parliament the other day to The Nurse’s limit til© work of hosLot. pital nurses to 5b hours a week draws, attention to a class of employment that, for a combination of hard work, wretched pay, and long hours is second to none in the Dominion. Their hours so long that they must be Hmited to what Fifty-six hours, eight hours a day and seven days a week! “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou hast to do,” says the Mosaic Law, and this is a. law of elementary hygiene where hard working people ana concerned. Yet because hospital nursing is a work of mercy and hospitals are subsidised by “charity,” pious people seem to hold that religious Sabbath regulations may be properly suspended as regards the actual woi'k. But; common humanity, cannot be put. off in this way, and it is hard to see why (hours that are too long for industrial -workers should not be too long for nurses—most of whom are youngwomen under 25. Of course a professional nurse works even longer hours than- those specified at times, but it must be remembered that in private, nursing there are spells in' between cases,' while the 'remuneration is fairly high. But tlie . hospital nurse, or ‘. pro-, bationeris at it day in and day out, the latter doing the work of a general servant and picking up the nursing as best she can on a wage of a few shillings a week. Why there is such a demand for situations in hospitals it is hard to say, unless it is that such employment is supposed to carry a higher social status than shop or office work. And taking up nursing is •an excuse for a girl to get away from the trammels of home. But the fact that hospital staffs ca,n be kept up from the ranks of those not entirely

dep'ivdoht on their earnings is no excuse for the poor wages that- are paid 1 for such responsible and arduous work, or for the long horn's the voting; women (have to put up with. _ If the boards governing these institutions cannot run Tri:o thing on more generous lines than a Whitechapel clothing factory it is time the State stepped in and afforded hospital employees the same protection a.s is given to other classes of labor. And if,ever a laborer was worthy of his or rather her, hire that laborer is the hospital nurse.

Apropos of the cabled announcement that Lord Lansdowne The Lords and will move the rejection the Budget. of the Budget by the House of Lords, it is interesting to note a few lines which appeared in “Punch” the other day concerning the noble Lord’s perturbation over this question. Sir F. C. Gould depicts Lord Lansdowne as Hamlet contemplating the Budget, and saying: “To pass or not to pass, that is the question, Whether ’tis nobler for the Lords to suffer i The slings and, arrows of a land-tax Budget, Or to take arms against the hideous thing, But that the dread of that- which must ensue, The ‘going to_.the country from whose bourn Few Tories may. return/ puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear the ills we have Than flv to others that we know not of.” Since the above was written Lord Lansdowne has made the plunge, and has given notice of his intention to end, not mend, the obnoxious measure. Whether this will terminate his own political troubles is quite another matter.