The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1891.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 93, 23 April 1891, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1891.

For tho cause- tSj&t lacks'assistance, For tho'wrong that noods resistance, For the futare ia tho distance, And the good tint we can do.

The Dunedin City Council have lately had under consideration the subject of employing prison labour on Corporation works. It appears that for some years past, by arrangement with the General Government, drunkards and other short-terra prisoners had worked out their sentences in the Botanical Gardens. At one period several men were thus employed, but the number had latterly dwindled down to fonr. The charge made for them was at the rate of 2s 6d per day. When the report of the Reserves Committee came before the Council, Mr Fish moved that in place of these men two free labourers should be engaged at .£75 a year, being equivalent in all to the amount which the four prisoners cost. He declared, with some justice, that the Council were very unlikely to get good work out of drunkards " suffering recovery," and others putting in short sentences, and maintained that two men would be more profitable, while their employment would furnish honest men with the means of livelihood*

In the course of the discussion which followed, the merits of prison labour were freely canvassed. Mr Fish stated that the Harbour Boaird had a number' of prisoners employed at the Heads, for which they only paid two shillings per man per diem, and so unsatisfactory was the work performed that it was unanimously resolved to do away with them and substitute free labour. Other Councillors considered that inasmuch as work of some kind must be found for prisoners, it was perfectly legitimate to employ them upon public works, and that the existing arrangement would be a very satisfactory one if a larger number of prisoners were employed. They asserted that the work done was very fair, but admitted lhat the employment of a warder for such a small number of rmen was a serious consideration.

Another objection to ©Cr. Fish's amendment, which appears* to us even more damaging than the competition of prison labour with free workmen, was levelled against the proposal to pay men only a year, a sum representing less than five shillings a day. One Councillor remarked that the effect would be to lower the standard wage of labourers, which now rules in Dunodin,

at about six shillings a day. In reply, Cγ. Fish, who is regarded as the chief spokesman of the working classes of Dunedin, expressed the opinion that a labourer who was guaranteed work from year's end to year's end was better off at £t$ a year than a labourer who receives 6s at casual employment. He mentioned that during' the previous week there were twenty-six applications for a situation advertised by the Council for a man to assist on the Town Belt at a salary ot £iS a y ear - The Council apparently coincided with these views, for they adopted Mr Fish's amendment, and two free men at a year each are to be substituted for the four prisoners who have hitherto been employed in the Botanical Gardens.

The discontinuance of prison labour, therefore, both by Harbour Board and City Council in Dunedin, has been made upon the ground that it is dear even at 2s 6d per day. How far tnis view was influenced by the unpopularity of such labour it is very difficult to say, but from the tone of the discussion-, in the Council, an adverse public opinion manifestly had some weight with members. The industrial classes are very jealous—and properly so—of the co>rnpetition of prisoners in avenues of employment upon which honest men depend for the daily bread of themselves and their families ; but while prisoners are found in practice to be worth less than 25 6d per day in a colony, the outlook is the reverse of hopeful for those schemes of self-supportiug gaols which we sometimes read about, but which rarely stand the test of a business audit applied to their balancesheet.