LABOUR IN NEW ZEALAND.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12647, 6 January 1904, Page 4

LABOUR IN NEW ZEALAND.

Dr. Victor S. Clark, Ph.D., who recently visited this colony under commission by the United States Government to inquire into the conditions of labour in Now Zealand, has presented his report to his department. The result of his investigations is embodied in an elaborate report of about 270 pages. Discoursing on the domestic side of affairs, he says:—“ The standard of living in thetfour principal cities does not differ appreciably from that in towns of the same size in the Northern States of the Union. There are no individual establishments or industries that dominate a single locality. One has to hunt to find out what the people are doing in a colonial town. The workmen live in detached cottages in roomy suburbs, and the tenement house and the slum are practically unknown. There is not great elegance in life, not much contrast in the economic condition of the people, but the same abundant material comfort that one meets in the prosaic but busy railway and commercial towns of the Upper Mississippi Valley. The people are more homogeneous than anywhere in America. There is no fringe of nnassimilated foreigners on the outskirts of society. But there is also less push and bustle and verve in business, and a greater remoteness from wider world interests, than is found among Americans. A man in the colony seems more inclined to stay in the grade into which he was born.” In a chapter dealing with labour conditions he speaks of the farm and the station hands thus: —“ Agricultural labour has a grievance in New Zealand, which at present it is airing in the newspapers, on account of the contrast between its own condition of work, with long hours, comparatively low pay, and almost no holidays, and the many advantages and privileges secured by urban workmen and skilled mechanics through the Arbitration Court awards. These labourers are in practically the same condition as the same class of workers in our own country. They rise early and work late, and have Sunday chores, and an unusual stress of toil at busy seasons of the year.”