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Auckland Star, Volume VII, Issue 1894, 13 March 1876, Page 2

In our last issue we published a telegram showing that two hundred Thames miners had agreed to proceed to Wellington to work on the Masterton railway, and that the Government sends the Luna for them. Such a drain on our population is the natural outcome of the administration of public works, and the expenditure of public money, as conducted by the Central Government for the past few years. On this aspect of the case there is no advantage in idle regrets. The bulk of the money has been spent South. Where the carcase was thither have the eagles been gathered together. Population has followed and thriven where the money was, and now by natural process, fostered by Government manoeuvring, we are deprived of the .bone and sinew, and intelligent experience, which in other circumstances might have gone to raise the Province to some measure of prosperity. But we regret the exodus on other grounds. For so far from there being a superfluity .of labour in the Province, we have had brought Ho our notice to-day a circumstance that shows 'the capabilities of the province for profitably' retaining the unemployed labour which seems to be looking away to distant fields for employment. A gentleman whose name we shall give on application offers remunerative employment at Pukekohe to.a number of men, and has placed himself in communication with Mr. William Rowe on the subject. He offers seven pounds per hundred for the cutting of puriri sleepers, and one pound each for posts. Another gentleman whose name we have, gives six pounds per hundred, and at this rate the men employed by him are making two pounds ten shillings per week; and we have it on unimpeachable authority that in that one bush there is similar employment for at least one hundred men. With fields for employment so near home, of which this is but a solitary instance, it is a great pity that men who had cast in their lot with us should be lured away, breaking up family and social ties, to begin life as it were anew. That there are many such opportunities for retaining !he now unemployed in the province we feel convinced ; and we regard it as the duty of every wellwisher to the .common good, to take opportunity for making stich known, so that those in quest of employment may find the work that is standing in waiting for them. Depression, whether at the Thames or throughout the province, is only temporary, and if this stream of emigration from the province proceeds, then when the cloud has passed away we shall seek in vain for the able and willing hands that are among the first requisites to help us on to prosperity.