The present platform staff comprises about 270 men, and the traffic branch alone has supplied 66 recruits.
In addition, quite a number of men have left the service for other more lucrative and congenial employment.
According to a statement made by the manager of the Glasgow tram system at a recent conference, the employment of women between 24 and 35 years of age has proved more satisfactory than taking on men past military age.
The most difficult problem, he said, was the shortage of motor men.
Conductors started at 27s a week, and the same amount was paid to the women, a large proportion of whom were married.
They had been very quick in pricking up their duties.
A woman's fingers were more nimble than those of the average man, and on account of their natural adaptability for the work of a conductor they had succeeded in giving the greatest satisfaction to passengers.
From the start the men still engaged on the Glasgow tramways took kindly to the introduction of the women, and did their best to make their work as congenial as possible.
• With the prevailing warm weather the cereal crops in the Clutha district are ripening rapidly.
In a few instances some heavy fields of autumn-sown oats have been cut.
Grass seed crops have also turned out satisfactorily, and this week a considerable amount of grass will be thrashed from the stooks.
Farmers will have to pay extremely high harvesting labour, but with good crops and the high prices ruling they should not raise much complaint.
There is a darker cloud than the labour problem looming on the Clutha farmers' horizon just now.
Recently the Clutha County Council decreed that the traction engine owners should each deposit a bond of £50 as an indemnity against their engines damaging the county roads.
The traction engine owners, it is reported, say that they will not deposit the bonds.
If the council and the traction owners are both determined, a deadlock will ensue, and the farmers' wheat and oaten sheaves will lie in stacks waiting for the mills that will not come.
• A correspondent asks us if there is a railway regulation that no liquor is to be carried or consumed on trains.
On inquiry, we find that there is no regulation that prohibits a person carrying liquor in a train.
Large quantities would, of course, be charged for in the usual way.
There is no restriction on persons who may wish to consume liquor on a train, provided they do not make themselves objectionable to others.
If they do so, the railway regulation would be enforced, which provides that if any person is drunk or behaves in a violent or offensive manner to the annoyance of others at any station or platform, or in any carriage, it shall be lawful for any constable or any person employed on or about the railway to arrest and detain the person so offending.
• The Prime Minister, speaking at the Horowhenua Show said that the people of this country had risen to the occasion in the providing of supplies for the Empire's need and the providing of men, but more men were wanted to-day.
No man fit for the front and able to get away was doing his duty if he was staying here.
To put it stronger, not only was he not doing his duty, but he was assisting the enemy.
He who assisted the enemy was a traitor to his country. - ODT, 27.1.1916.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
