Truth CRIMINAL IMPORTATION OF UNSKILLED LABOR.

NZ Truth, Issue 58, 28 July 1906, Page 4

Truth

CRIMINAL IMPORTATION OF UNSKILLED LABOR.

JPUBH&HED *SVBRt SAfcUBDAY MOENis& at LtJKE'.s Lane (off MannebsSTBBB3P), • WELLINGTCfctf , N.Z. Subscbiption (in Advance), 13s, her annum.

SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1966.

With the arrival of almost eveiry? steamer from England the already jover-stocked labor market of this coJlony is further swelled by, a num'ber of British emigjran'ts who have left •their homes in England, Scotland,- or Ireland in the hope of making their' fortunes ixt the country described as the workers' paradise,- by oitc Government agpnts in the MoMiferiand. Some .of these arrivals arei skilled artisans,, jafid-'oi them we'have"&othing ta say, although even to the skilled trades--maai; New Zealand at «ie preseni74ime does not hold out any too alluring- a ! prospect. But the' majority describe? thefffitselves as nawvies, farm laborers, .casual hands, grocers', drapers' and shop assistants, or some manner of ■ clerks, all a class 1 of worker that ate a glut on the local labor market -already. For the Government to offer .mdiioerttents to this class of immigrant is opposed "to "all laws of democratic goVeriimeißt and is most mischevious and disastrous in its result. -Forcing the labor market in .this manner is playing • dilreetly into the hand's of u the capitalist and the sweater. The labor market is like ev^ry other market— Trades Unions and Arbitration Courts notwithstaridi-tig— a Iglut means • low prices. Just exactly : what this means may be gleaned from a paragraph that appeared in the New*Zealand "Times" of Wednesday last. A prominent Wellington advertised for three or four laborers for a\ ; few days' work. No less than 43 applied for the job. Where -One, was wanted there were ten; to fill the place. -The same authority is responsible for the statement that the supply of laborers in the huildingvtrade has Tieen yVery much in excess of iSie demand for many months past, notwithstanding that the 'building trade has been exceptionally brisk and that there has beet* a vast amount of Government and \ Council laboring work on hand. ,It does hot require a great amount of reasoning to see that if the lahor market in the building trade is overstocked, it must be very much more so in those other branches of industry that have 1 not participated in ,thc building boom. This particular instance of course applies to Wellington, but the same state of affairs exists in the other centres. In Christ■church building operations are fairly active, and the exhibition has absorfted several hundred casual laborers ; but this notwithstanding, the cry of the unemployed is very loud in the southern city and also very pitiful. The lot of the laborer there is as bad as in Wellington, and from ■ Auckland and Dunedin comes the same story of distress.-, • ■•■.;.• • * And in spite of this the Government { will persist in inspiring paragraphs i cahd articles in the British newspapers j to the effect that there js plenty of 1 work in New Zealand for all and

sundry and good money , to be made by any man with no capital but his health and strength. The late Premier for many years back made every endeavor to send up our population figures. Mr Seddoa was a believer in developing the country and he knew that unless the population was here we must as a nation remain at a standstill, or ' at the best progress very slowly. And yet it was apparently iii the very face of his own convictions that Mr Seddon pursued this " population - at - any - price policy." During his recent visit to Melbourne, speaking of the labor problem in Australia, he &aid : "The worst thing you can do with - a Human being is to keep him* idle. Bone and muscle are wealth— or at least Wealth-producing When dormant they are Suffering ; When employed they are the most valuable machinery a country possesses. If capital is invested in valuable machinery which lies dormant, capitalists suffer by losing the interest on their capital. . The most beautiful and complete mechanism in the world is the human mechanism, and to keep it idle is," to my mind,' unnatural and unprofitable." Mr Seddon struck the right key-note there. The country that can keep all its human mechanism. at work, producing wealth for the community is the only truly prosperous" country. But there is a vast difference between bringing human mechanism into a country and finding it profitable employment when it gets there. The capitalist who would invest in valuable machinery and keep iit idle, would, on Mr Seddon's showing, be a fool; but what sort of a liigh-ciass idiot would he be if he not. only invested his money in valuable machinery but kept it running, at full speed for the sake of seeino- the wheels go round ? Population is very necessary .. to any country's prosperity ; but unless that population is to be profitably employed the surplus becomes a parasite, living upon the Work of others; and a continual drain, indirectly, if not directly, upon the State treasury. Under our much boomed 'immigration laws we are attracting a continuous stream of workers from other shores. There is no demand for these workers ; if they •find work upon . arrival tfiey are only filling a gatt^thatvi could have been filled eq^ail^i^BlljT ten times over by I the worke^lMwl^U'ea'dy. The new 1 arrivals,^' d^^^. make the competition for the! ',taSo^' . ; bf existence more keen, and' the' ; conditions of life for those . m the/hea.ftbreaking struggle harder' to bear . than they were— and God knot's they have been hard enough; for many, a ." long year past. A South African millionaire 'is reported to" have once said, "When men are hungry you can get them cneap." Is the Government desirous of giving •*our budding millionaires cheap labor? • • • It looks very much like it. Surplus labor can only, mean one thing— the lowering of wages. ' Modern history furnishes unfortunately only too many instances of this. What was the most devilish crime of the Chicago packers exposed by Mr Upton Sinclair in his recent book "The Jungle ?" It was not the fact of diseased cattle being passed through far .human consumption : it was not the fact that sometimes a man's linger or maybe a , whole limb became entangled in the machinery ana passed out into the world., as potted ham ; but it was the fiendish and damnable method of keeping the packing labor matkdt "always over-stdeked, so that the' struggle for existence amongst the workers would be so great that they cdii'ld never Save, never rise, never get away from the degradation of a soulless drudgery. A hundred thousand workers are kept merciless- ■, ly and systematically upon the point of starvation, that wages may be kept down. That is what over-stocking the labor market 1 has done in Chicago, and the packers themselves supplied the money to advertise and distribute pamphlets in Europe luring foreign •Workers to cross the Atlantic iii quest of the big rwages they promised in Packing-toWn." Our democratic Government, with the best intentions in the world, is doing exactly the same thing on a. smaller scale here. It' is not a pleasant thing to Say, nor is it a- pleasant thing to think about, but it is nevertheless true We would be only too pleased if We could conscientiously believe that there is plenty of work for all these new arrivals, and that the wages they (receive when they do find work will compensate th6m for the change they have made. But our own observations have made this belief . absolutely impossible. There is no use disguising .the fact that there are hundreds of good holiest workers in the colony .to-day who Would gladly accept work of any sort, if it were offered, to keep their wives and children from the pinch of want, if hot from absolute starvation. In the face of this We unhesitatinglv cas* tigate the action of the Government in adding recruits to this wretched army of unemployed, to increase its suffering and its misery, and decrease its chances of succor, as positively wicked and criminal. • , * ■.*:■■ ■'■■•■•*'. •- We do not for ond moment mean to say that the 900,000' odd people at present constituting the New Zealand nationhood is the limit of population that these islands can support. Far from it. Not thousands but millions, could easily be supported on the products of New Zealand soil. * But the time is not yet, because the conditions are not fitting. New Zealand is not at present producing a tithe of the wealth she is capable of producing, and what is even more to the point, New Zealanders- are not receiving anything like the whole of the wealth she is producing. If the annual production of New Zealand were to be divided among New Zealanders, there would be an individual spending power so great that the population might be raised 50 per cent within six months and workers still be in good demand. Of course this is impossible whilst we are dependent for so many of our every day necessities upon the English and foreign, manufacturer. It is also impossible whilst so much of our best land is owned by a few squatters and devoted wholly and solely to raising sheep. Great as our wool and frozen mutton industrv is, it must always be remembered that in a small country like New Zealand sheep raising has its limitations. By the use of fertilisers and by closer settlement the output of wool and mutton miKht hs slight.lv increased, but it is only a matter or

time when the limit would bts reached, and then if the country is to be dependent upon its mutton. and wool it cannot get "any forrader." And as the men who own the bigger sheep stations in this country are all wealthy, there is not the least likelihood of their using any special means of making, their acres carry a larger flock. They are mostly men of the conservative type, perfectly willing and contented to go on growing rich without trouble and without the necessity of making any particular use of their brain power. The people then who are reaping all the benefit from our great wool and mutton industry are not only the most useless brutes that the workers have to feed and clothe, but are the greatest obstacles in the way of an increase of population being profitably possible. Unless the land held by these gentry be made to yield its full harvest the prosperity of the colony cannot be expected to progress. If the Government is content to let John Smith, described on the troll as "gentleman j" and mostly residing in Europe, quietly year after year pocket the clip value of some thousands of acres of good land, they can import immigrants until doomsday, but not one solitary extra hand will John Smith's acres find employment for. A mint will not produce sovereigns without the gold, and the dumping of human machinery upon these shores can only be productive of poverty and misery, until such time as the raw material is there ready for them to convert into a national asset. Let the Government find the work before it worries' about looking for workers. When there are good billets and good pay sticking out they will come without being advertised for. • • • • i ■ And when we say let the Government provide the work, we do not mean that they should borrow a million or so and build a railway. Public works, reproductive or otherwise, are not the class of work we mean. The construction of harbor works or a railway line gives only temporary employment at best, and it" bodes very ill indeed for the country when the spending power of the workers has to be largely derived from what the Minister generally re-* fers to as a "vigorous public works policy." No public work, no matter of how important or gigantic a character, warrants a Government in importing unskilled labor of all classes, on the assumption that because the Government is -spending money, private individuals must he doing the same In Wellington at the present time the number of men employed on Government and Council works is enormous, and yet, in spite of this, there is not work enough to go round. When the works that are presently in hand are finished there will be hundreds thrown upon the streets, and how they are to .live is a problem that Sir Joseph Ward may find very hard to solve. While we hear a {rreat deal about New Zealand's prosperity; it must not . be forsotten that the workinp- man finds mighty little of the prosperity coming his way. Wool, mutton, flax and other exports may bring a record price in the London market, but that fact doesn't raise the navvy's screw five bob a week, it doesn't reduce his house rent worth a cuss, nor does it make the spending power qt half-a-sovereign at the baker's, grocer's, butcher's or fruiterer's any greater. In fact "prosperity" in the shape of high prtices for New Zealand products in London generally means that rents and the prices of local household requisites po up. In New Zealand perhaps more than any where else in the Australasian colonies, the worker has always been led to believe by politicians that so long: as the price of wool, etc., keeps up the country is prosperous, and he ought to be thankful to the powers that , be. It nevei seems to occur to him that because John Smith (who4ives in luxury, and never knows what it is to be short of a bob) gets fd a pound more, for his wool, Bill Jones (who owns a terrace of houses and is also pretty flush) has no right to raise his rent half-a-crown a week. But Jones does it with unfailing; and most cheerful regularity, and what is more remarkable he pursuades the worker that the rise iii rent is a sigh of prosperity. And the worker, like the good patriot he is, denies himself ten drinks a week and savs "Hooray for God's Own Countrv." It is on the strength of this lap-sided prosperity that the Government persists in its criminal system of importing workers, apparently quite overlooking the fact that a rise in wool doesn't mean a rise in shearers' wages, nor the employment of more shearers, it doesnot make anv difference to the shearer whether- wool fetches 6£d or lOfd. And the wharf laborer finds low price wool just as heavy to hitch onto the slings as any other port . of wool, and the man in the stoke-hole doesn't care a continental damn which way the sale The grower and the broker reap all the benefit; and what little leaks back to the mail of toil in indirect ways is taken back again by the manufacturer, 'who charges him extra for his socks because wool is "Up " The worker in this, country is the most, deluded poor creature on-'. ■ the face of the earth.- He gets it in:the .ne'cjfc all the time. The prosperity' of the critintry increases everything but his waees and his chance of eetthig work. The glowing accounts he reads of' his own condition in the newspapers even tempts him to increase his family, and year by year he finds it harder and harder to make both ends meet. And still he whoops for the whole Government ticket which spends thousands of pounds of his own money in bringing hard -up rivals to compete with him in hSs own market, and makes no endeavor to either find him employment or lessen his cost of liviner. Verilv the tendency of Liberalism in this countrv is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. __