The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1894. THE LABOUR MARKET.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6982, 8 February 1894, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1894. THE LABOUR MARKET.

Most of the colonies at the present time seem to have a superabundant supply of labour. The other ilay a cablegram said that the ('ape Government had warned intending immigrants that there were more workmen in that colony than there was work for. New Zealand is in the same unfortunate condition. Tho last number to hand of the Journal of the Department of Labour says that " owing to the low passage rates between Australia and New Zealand we have had a large inllux of working men from the sister colonies." The journal in question does its best to represent the labour market as in a fairly satisfactory state, but the reports which it publishes from time to time really tell a diJl'erent tale. There never was a time since the founding of the colony—except perhaps for a little while between the collapse of the goldlields and the beginning of the Public Works policy—when so many men were out of employment at the busy season of the year. In a colony like this nobody should be out of work at tho height of summer. The Labor Journal says, with the unctuous hypocrisy which characterises so many of its statements, that "it speaks well for the resources of New Zealand that she has been able to absorb the very

large increase to the wage-earning community without materially disturbing the labor market." The fact is that the labor market has been very materially disturbed. There is scarcely a township in the colony without its unemployed, while there are hundreds and hundreds in the towns and cities, besides the large number tramping the country. The working men of New Zealand had never less cause to thank any Government than they have to thank their present "patrons." Mr Seddon's constant blow, in trumpet tones, about the prosperity of the colony, together with the reports of the high rates of wages earned by his co - operative workmen, attracted, and is still attracting, crowds of people from the Australian colonies, many of them of a very undesirable kind—men who have knocked about those colonies for years and acquired the habits peculiar to the vagrant class. New Zealand had no need for this immigration. The talk about our increased prosperity was for the most part mere blow, and very dishonest blow into the bargain. If the truth must be told, the Government have done a great deal to check enterprise, and so lessen the demand for labour, by their labour and other legislation. Of this there can be no manner of doubt. They created a strong feeling of uncertainty, and there is nothing truer than the truism —so often derided by the kind of statesmen (save the mark !) who trade on the prejudices of the working classes —that capital shrinks on the slightest alarm. And the reason is not that capitalists are a particularly selfish class ; they are not a bit more selfish than the working class, or the professional class, and not nearly soselfish as the political class—the most graspingly and vulgarly selfish of all classes. The reason, is simply that capitalists are human beings with the ordinary instincts and a fair share of the shrewdness of the race. We never ! yet heard of a demagogue who was willing to lose his all for the sake of the community at large. Is there a single member of the present Government, or a single flaming Liberal of the Government stamp in any part of the country, who acts with regard to what he possesses on any other principles than those which control and regulate the action of the capitalist ? "We trow not. And that the Government know right well. They also know —they cannot help knowing— that constant interference with trade tends to depress it. But they happened to be in power by the grace of the Trade Unions, and they degraded their office and injured the colony by pandering to the ignorant prejudices of their masters. They posed as the patrons of the working classes, and the result of their administration has been to flood the colony with aliens and render the condition of the working man ten times worse than it was when they came into office. Were trade as prosperous in Australia as it was during the Atkinson regime we have not the slightest hesitation in asserting that there would be another large exodus from the colony. It is to be hoped the Government have learned a lesson from their folly. They have already had to reduce the wages of the co-operative workmen, and the Trades Unions are calling upon them to take steps to stop the disastrous immigration. The working men have not such unbounded faith in the resources of the

colony as our self-complacent Ministers, for they know from hitter that labor is a drug in the market. But they have themselves in great measure to blame. They placed the Government in power, they encouraged 'theni in their labor legislation, thereby caus)ing capital to be withdrawn from industry, and they supported their high-rate-of-wage co-operation, which is in great measure responsible for the influx of workers and spielers (for a goodly number of these gentry have come too) from the neighboring colonies. And if employment is scarce at the present time—the busiest season of the year — what may we not expect the coming winter to be ? It will be impossible for the Government to provide work for all the unemployed ; they are, in fact, already refusing lots of applications, besides reducing the pay. The prospect is not by any means a pleasant one, and the lesson what it teaches is that their are certain economic laws— framed not by man, but by nature, or rather by the Power which framed both natureand man—that cannot be broken with impunity.