THE Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18,1880.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, 18 August 1880, Page 2

THE Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1880.

.Although when the question of the | Q percent, reduction in $c pay of evil servants wag before the House the Government gave an assurance Ih&t the reduction would not be enforced in all .cases, it seeuis that no exemptions whatever are bfeing made. "Whether a subordinate officer in re* peipt of £3 per week in Dunedin or Christen urcb, or a clerk similarly paid on the "West Coast goidfielcpi, all are to puffer alike. Mow. this, it must be apparent, is very unfair Ind unjust. The difference between the cost of |iv Dg in any of the metropolitan towns and the goldfields here is quite 20 per cent., and why those officials who are u'lforfujaate enough to be located in mining communities should be elated $o this extent, we wholly fail j:q ccc. The pay of some of the operators in Ihe Telegraph Department baa been reduced to £2 per week. In any o f $hp larger towns it is possible, b,y dint gftjjsujnjost pponomj, for a young

man to maintain himself with some small outward visible show of respectability on £2 per week, but it is quite out of (he question in these rough and roatiy communities. That there is an important difference in the cost of living between towns and goldfield?, basMong been recognised in the service, \by the allowance, up to a short (iraeago of 20 pep cent, extra pay to telegraph operators quartered in places like Reefton. Since that • regulation was first introduced, up to the present time, the conditions of life here have not altered in the slightest, and it is there perpetrating a doubly-refined act of cruelty to telegraph officers here to aek them to participate in f he second reduction We make no apt peal on behalf of the higher salaried officers, though their case is bad enough, and they should certainly be granted the goldfields allowance, but in the case of the poorer paid officers we do ask the Government to remove the scandal Aflicb has been done the service, for it is no'hing short of a scandal to ask young men of education and long training in an iinpor« tanfc and responsible branch of the public. service to accept a rate of pay about equal to that of an agricultural laborer. As the Government have reserved to themselves a discretionary power in enforcing (fee reductions, we ask them in common justice to exercise it in the direction i?e have pointed out, for great as is the need for economy, it can never justify tbe perpetration of such a cruel wrong.