Serious Question of the Day From Our Wuchang Correspondent While the war has brought greatly increased wages to the working man, who backed by his union has been able to make good his demands on employers for an adequate augmentation of his remuneration in view of the greatly increased cost of living, and while even the school teachers—the Cinderellas of the professional classes—have so far influenced public opinion that the 2 national} conscience at last appears to be in a fair way to be aroused to the fact that unless the schoolmaster receives a, just recompense for his work the future of Britain is indeed dark, there is one class of men who have suffered severely of late years as far as stipends are concerned, and that is the parsons, whether of the Established Church or of the Nonconformist churches.
The great majority of these men, especially the Church of England curates and the Free Church ministers, were never too well pa before the war, and now that everything has so greatly increased in price many of these worthy men find themselves in what can only be termed desperate financial straits. Formerly the vicar and even the curates of most parishes were probably better off than the majority of their parishioners. Nowadays it is not an uncommon thing to find the curate at any rate almost the poorest man in the place, while even his vicar is often hard put to to make ends meet. The result, of course, is that the church is finding it more and more difficult' to get candidates for ordination. Recently a rector of a mining village advertised for a curate at £170 per annum—a_remuneration much smaller than that obtained by many of the youths employed in the pits. He was unable to get a single man to take the post at the salary offered, the applicant who was the most modest in his requirements wanting £250 a year together with a free house.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.