Notes of the Day.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3577, 17 July 1912, Page 4

Notes of the Day.

WHAT DOES THE BRITISH WORK-

ING MAN EARN ?

The significant point about the class war at Home (says Harry S. Gullett) is that everybody agrees that something really is the matter. We are no longer told that all this industrial brawling is the work of the selfish agitator. By common consent to-day the British workingman is overworked and underpaid. His hours of labor are excessive, his employment is intermittent, his wages are too low, his leisure and his opportunities for rearing healthy, sturdy children to carry on industrial Britain after him are inadequate. That is agreed. The wonder is the time it took for the British intelligence to see so far, although it must be confessed that intelligence was sorely blighted by material interests. The outsider has seen it long enough. One glance at the official figures was sufficient. These are the wages of the British working men : 4 per cent, get under 15s a week. 8 per cent, from 15s to 20s a week, 20 per cent, from 20s to 25s a week, 21 per cent, from 25s to 30s a week, 21 per cent, from 80s to 35s a week, 13 per cent, from 35s to 40s a week, 7 per cent .from 40s to 45s a week, 6 per cent, over 45s a week. Those are the rates paid to 8,000,000 adults. Over 4.000,000 receive less than 30s. Between 1896 and 1910 the retail prices of food in this countrv increased bv 19 per cent. About seven-twelfths of the working man’s expenditure is on food. Over the same period the wholesale price of coal jumped by 33 per cent., and there wasa substantial advance in the export price of cotton and woollen fabrics. The wages in those 15 years went up by 11 per cent. In other words, to meet an increased expenditure on food alone of about 3s 6d in the pound there was an increased wage of 2s _3d in the wound. So that over a period in which most British industries have kicked the beam in exuberant prosperitv tlie wage-earner has become docidedly poorer.