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48
Vestry upon their own effort at a partial emancipation by providing
the wharfage and plant necessary for the Dusting and Slopping
of a portion of the Parish; obviously a step in the right direction.
At the same time it is in my opinion still desirable that the
suggestion made on page 33 of my report for 1872, should be a matter
for consideration, if contracts for the other parts of the Parish are to
continue to be made.
Without detail I allude to the advisability of payment to the
contractors for results, and not for work which they promise to do,
a certain price being paid for every load of dust and refuse removed.
This plan has been a success in at least one neighbouring district
and pending the completion of the greater improvement, I should
much like to see this tried if possible in connection with our own
work. It is more and more palpable, from the continuous
and rapid increase of the number of applications received in the
Sanitary Department, that the contractors are allowing the present
arrangement to become still more inefficient, and hence my desire
to see even some minor change effected which would be likely, as
this might, to give a far stronger incentive to increased activity
and industry than at present exists.
If we were receiving from 3,000 to 5,000 applications yearly they
would not perhaps be deemed excessive, and no great blame could fairly
be attached to the contractors, but by permitting such neglect as to
make the enormous number of 20,781 applications in one year, or
rather 15,049 in six months, possible, they are not consulting their
own interests. On the contrary, as other Metropolitan Parishes are
no better treated, they are strenuously urging all those who employ
them, sooner or later, to accept the challenge, and reply to it as you
have already done. In this effort to throw off the yoke, I most
heartily wish that the Vestry may meet with the generous and
ample appreciation which they deserve, for the courage and public
spirit displayed by them, in becoming in part at least their own
contractors, with the fair prospect before them of eventually taking
the whole of the work into their own hands, and of thus accomplishing
a complete deliverance from a most provoking species of trade
injustice.