Minutes of Evidence p.1401-1509 - Parliament of Victoria

1425
48210. How many hours do they work for thttt ? -About ten hours.
48211. Ten hours a dav ?-Yes.
48212. And the lads b~gin at 7s a week, do I undcrsttmd you to say ?-Yes, generally is. or Ss.,
according to what they are and their size. ·
48213. And you increase them yearly till they reach the age of journeymen ?-Yes.
48214. What proportion of those 335 hands will be lads under eighteen ?-About lOO.
48215. Do you employ any femalAs at all ?-Yes.
48216. How many of those ?-About 70.
48217. A uy .of those under eighteen?-Yes.
48218. Ho.w many do you think ?-A large majority,
48219. Seventy females, most of whom are under eighteen?-Yes.
48220. What do they earn ?-Various wages from 7s. to Ss. up to £1.
48221. And how many hours do they work-the same as the males ?-Yes, a little shorter. Perhaps
they commence five minutes later and leave five minutes earlier; a little shorter. The men do not work exactly
ten hours.
48222. Do you find any difficulty in getting employes ?-Yes, we could do with more of the right
sort.
48223. vVhatdo you mean by the "right sort'' ?-Respectable and good, that are desirous of working
and getting on.
48224. Plenty to be got who are not of that description ?-Yes there are too many.
48225. In what way has the tariff affected your industry ?-It has not affected it at all.
48226. Neither one way nor the other ?-As far as the duty on biscuits goes it has not affected us.
As far as the tariff put duty upon other articles that we use-our machinery and so forth-it has very much
injured us. As for the duty of 2d. a pound on biscuits it is inoperative. If you say it neither does
good nor harm, it does no good ; it does harm possibly, and is a very bad example to the other colonies
where we would like to have intercolonial free-trade.
48227. There are very few biscuits imported now ?-No, now we are very large exporters.
48228. But there was a large quantity imported when you began, was not there ?-No.
When you say "began " tlo you metm when the duty was :first put on. When we started twenty-nine
years ago there was a large amount of biscuits imported prior to that, and it continued a good while, but
when a duty of 2d. a pound was put upon biscuits, perhaps that year and the year prior a large
quantity of useless ship stores were brought on shore for pigs and dogs, and for feeding purposes, and when
the 2d. a p01md was imposed it entirely stopped that. The biscuits were sent away and ceased to land.
48229. Do I understand you to say that the class of biscuit imported before the duty was imposed
was not the class of biscuit that competed with you at all : it was a class of ship biscuit landed for clogs
and pigs ?-Yes, nine-tenths of the biscuits landed for a year before the duty were not for human consumption
at all.
48230. Then ab.,ut the time when it was a penny a. pound-it was not made 2d. a pound all at
once ?-Yes, I think it was.
48231. No, not at all ?-I do not know that there was much difference between the penny and 2d.;
biscuits would not come in any way.
48232. I am not speaking of what they would do now, but what it was when you commenced. I
can understand that now you have reached a stage when the duty is a matter of indifference, but was that
always so. How many hands did you employ before there was a duty at all ?-We commenced with very
few and gradually worked on,
48233. How many hands did you begin with twenty-nine years ago ?-I commenced with my own.
'18234. Do you know when the duty was first imposed-a penny a pound ?-I think it was 1865. I
would not speak positively, if you ha:ve the dates there.
48235. Yes, I have the dates here. In 1867 the duty was put on. After tl1at duty of a penny a
pound was put on can you give the Commission any information as to the rate at which your business
increased ?-No, I do not know. The business has generally increased about ten hands yearly, pretty
steadily, but the business has very much increased during the last two or three years. The Sydney Exhibition
and our own Exhibition gave a wonderful impetus to our trade.
48236. Do you know how long the penny a pound duty remained before you got the additional
penny ?-I think it might be perhaps four years.
48237. Do you advocate the abolition of the 2d. a pound on biscuits ?-Yes, it is no good.
Of course~ we would like to see the duties tabm off in other colonies too, to use ours as a lever, if we could,
to take theirs off too. It is no good. It is only setting up a bad example and doing us no good, because
we have the credit of getting protection which does us no good, and everything we use and consmne is
heavily taxed, which makes the amount of dnties we pay nearly as much as our wages.
48238. Will you enumerate the articles upon which you pay duties, and upon which you wish to
have the duties removed ?-Yes.
48239. What are the first ?-Sugar. Of course we would like to have the duty o:ff sugar. Of
course a very large amount of flour and wheat is grown here. Perhaps it might not always be in the event
of a scarcity--
48240. But you do not want the duty off wheat ?-Yes, wheat and flour.
48241. Is not the duty inoperative the same as in youi: own article of biscuits ?-I was just coming
to that-though it is upon foreign :fiour, there is an article which we -very much use for ship bread called
sharps or pollard which is very cheap in Adelaide, and particularly so in New Zealand, which is met here
with a duty of £2 a ton.
48242. _1\.r·e there no sharps made here from our own grown wheat?-Yes, there are.
48243. Is not that large enough to supply your requirements ?-Yes, as far as being large enough,
but there is a large demand for those things for other purposes. We l!oulcl buy sharps in'Nevr Zealand and
bring them here profitably but for the duty, which puts about 50 per cent. upon their cost.
48244. Will you explain to the Commission how it is that this duty upon wheat or the primary production
of wheat is operative, and you say it is not in the case of biscuits which are exactly on the same
footing.
TARIFF.
You have both overtalcen the supply and there is a large export?-There is not a large export of
8 S
T. Swallow,
continued,
1st ::.l!'y 1883.