MAORI FARM LABOURERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 273, 18 November 1927, Page 8

MAORI FARM LABOURERS.

OUSTING EUROPEANS.

One reason wliy men from the cities who go into the country find it hard to get work is that Maoris are taking on farm and labouring work much more than they used to do, because they are getting more and more Europeanised, want to live like the pakeha, and have more money to spend, to go to the pictures, and wear the most fashionahle clothes. "The average athlete young Maori is a most desirable and satisfactory workman, who is not a"growser,'" was what a prominent resident of Waiuku said yesterday when speaking on the unemployment question. "He is not hard to satisfy with regard to food, and he will erect his tent or his little hut and live beside the job till it is finished in the most contented way. About- all the potato digging, in the district is done by Maoris, and they do their work splendidly. Many of them still live very close to Nature, and seem, although the work is hard, to enjoy every hour of the day. They look at the sun to tell the time, whether it is Sidey's time or normal time, plunge into the creeks to have a fresher 1 after work, have a good feed, very often of the potatoes they have dug fresh from the soil. . Then they turn in early, and are soon asleep—* sleepless Maoris is almost unknown—to awaken in the morning with the sunrise. The Maori was indeed a force to be reckoned with in the labour market, most of the young men coining on bad been educated at the ordinary day schools, end just as very often they excelled the white boys at their lessons, so they very often expelled them at manual work. The Maori was not strong on regulation of work. His motto was: "If you have a job. go and get it done."