RABBITS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVII, Issue 1372, 13 August 1895, Page 4

RABBITS.

TO THE EBITOK.

Sir, —A most instructive letter, re the Rabbit Plague, from Mr J. Cowan, appeared in your issue of July 30. He states that on the two stations in his charge during five years 72 men have been employed continually rabbiting at a cost of £20,700, while his return from the skins resulted in a total loss of some £7BOO. This looks to be a big loss to the station owner. But what about the men, and what about the com munity at large. If we go into figures we we will find that the men's gross earnings during those five years, after a reasonable deduction for poison,' traps, etc., did not come up to £1 per week. If £2 per week can be looked upon as standard wages, then the only conclusion that can be arrived at, is, that two-and-a-half years of the working lives of 72 men have been fully wasted, causing a loss to themselves and also to the community (being all this time nonproducers) for the sake of what ? Mr Cowan answers, the question when he says that unless trapping and poisoning is continued summer and winter a runholder can't live in Otago. All this and more is simply to enable a, tottering industry to be propped up for tome little time longer, and for this purpose we are denied even pure air to breathe, and pare water to drink, the summer winds bring pestilence and malaria, and the creeks and water races abound with typhoid germs. It certainly has now become evident that runholding cannot be carried on unless under conditions most detrimental both to the physical and moral welfare, for, by sending|our young manhood into the rabbit camp, whatever noble and exalted ideas exist in the untrained mind, they will remain in fallow, if not smothered by evil contaminations. That the wool industry is a most important one for the colony no one will deny, but it is also evident according to Mr Cowan's own showing, if to benefit the community, it must be carried on upon a widely different system to the present one, when such a large portion of the working community has to work below a living wage to secure a competence for one or two. Now, as Mr Cowan pays (so I understand) a higher rate for the skins than any of the runholders about, it is quite evident that rabbits cannot be counted as a blessing even from a working man's point of view.—l am, etc., Johst Werner, Lowburn, August 12th 1895,