IMPORTED LABOR.

Evening Star, Issue 12768, 22 March 1906, Page 7

IMPORTED LABOR.

DOMESTICS AND NAVVIES. [Special to the Star.] WELLINGTON, Match 22. The Labor Department is in a state of absolute ignorance of tbe question raised by recent reports from England about the engagement of navvies and domestic servants. Regarding the latter, of course, the public feeling is the “more the better.” Everybody wants domestic servants always, -and the prosperity of th© country enables all young women and girls that like to dispense with domestic service, which, moreover, as regulated by many housekeepers, is not at all inviting to the average young woman, between the architects who-plan dog kennels for the servants and the housewives who want to get twenty-three hours’ work out of twenty-four hours from their “slaveys.” Well, this is. by the way. I heard a young woman to-day put it in a sort of fine frenzy. Whatever the facts, the moral is plain: that immigration must supply the market. As to the navvies, the secretary of the department is -nervous. He fears their engagement in the Old Country will ultimately result in flooding tho labor market and creating a considerable number of unemployed; and his own personal opinion is that “if the immigration scheme is to be continued, the Government should guarantee the men a year’s employment.” Of course, no such guarantee has been given, and is not likely to be so long as thousands of the Maori race are available for this work on the co-opera-tive principle.