The Reason Why.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 610, 21 May 1891, Page 2

The Reason Why.

[to the bditob. I Sib, —Your contemporary is anxious to know why there still continue to be such a large balance of departures as against arrivals in the colony. I would commend to their notice the following letter published in a Sydney paper:—“ The exodus of working people and email traders from Maoriland still continues with unabated vigour. I think there can be little doubt that the success of the frozenmeat industry, together with the high price of wool, sufficiently explains the trouble. The great sheep-farmera are buying out the agriculturists right and left, and farms which formerly employed scores of huebandmen are now laid down in grass ; sheep have taken the places of men. The freezing-works only employ a few hands compared with the farms, and wages, since the collapse of the strike have been reduced to 5s a day without board, but with plenty of broken time, the consequence being that only grown.np lads and young bachelors can aCora to remain at such work. Add to this the fact that tho wealthy sheepfarmers now import nearly all their own stores direct from Lon. don or elsewhere aud have no need for local storekeepers, and tbe departure of the trading classes is easily accounted for Until some sufficient check is placed on tbe monopoly of the land and the wholesale laying out of agricultural lands in grass, or until frozen mutton and wool come tjowa very materially in price, Maoriland will continue to retrograde in everything except the accumulation of wealth in a few bands.” Even while there is a local fight as to whether two Freezing Kings can reign in the district we hoar of the butcheries being bought up,—l am, etc. t Vtiumu