The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 188, 13 August 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1867.

A very satisfactory proof how fully alive our Victorian fellow-colonists are to the advantages of extending as much as possible the number of local manufactures and industries was afforded last year by a vote of local £5000 by the Legislature for their encouragement. The report of the Board appointed to consider the claims for premiums for the introduction of new industries has ju9t been published. It is a most interesting document, and proves clearly how much may be done in this direction hy a judicious system of rewards for industry. The regulations under which the rewards were granted, excluded all industries which were established before January 1865, and all articles which might be in the course of manufacture or production, but not completed. The result of the first year's operation of the grant has been the subsidising to various amounts of about thirty new industries and manufactures. The most remarkable of these are the paper of Mr Kenny, to which a premium of £1500 has been awarded; the woollens of the Victorian Woollen and Cloth Company, rewarded with the same amount ; flax, hemp, crockery, leather, organ-building, perfumery, candles, aud chemicals, to which rewards of from £50 to £200 have been granted. In addition to these, there is a goodly list of less important articles, and several meritorious applicants are stated to have been excluded from obtaining a reward only by the stringency of the regulations. It may be that all or most of thess industries were in existence previous to any grant being proposed for their encouragement, that none of them can be said to have directly resulted from it; but it is impossible to doubt that an immense stimulus has been given to those who are engaged in tbe prosecution of new industries by the knowledge that a public and substantial reward would crown their success. The great difficulty in establishing & new industry is to sustain it until it becomes so thoroughly rooted in the soil as to be able to dispense with artificial assistance. If this is* not to be done by protection, it can only be done by some such system as that adopted in Melbourne. In many cases, as is proved by the Report, the premiums awarded have made all the difference between failure and comparative success, or at any rate have enabled enterprising men to extend their operations without embarrassing themselves or their property. The great point however is the public recognition ol the value to tbe community of any attempt to introduce a new means of livelihood. The children of both sexes now growing up around us are fast increasing in numbers aud must be provided for in some way ; and already the difficulty of findiDg profitable employment for our young people is presenting itself daily in more formidable guise. It is impossible to overrate the wretchedness to which this one want may iu time give rise, the injury which it may inflict upon us as a community, pr individually upon the many who might, under fairer circumstances, become useful and respectable members of society. By encouraging to any extent tbe establishment of new occupations, we should at least lessen the danger which must often suggest itself to thoughtful minds. It is perhaps too much to expect that a similar amount will ever be voted by our legislature for similar

purposes. The rewards with which we are most familiar are rewards for the apprehensions of offenders against the public peace and safety — the votes we. mosjt urgently require are votes for the erection of a central ..penal establishment, for the erection.'of new prisons and liihatic asylums. With so many imperative demands upon the public purse, it is perhaps too much.' to expect that public money will be devoted to an object which in the future would go far towards rendering them one and all well nigh unnecessary. Want of occupation and its natural consequence, poverty, in all ages and in all countries, have been and always will be the fiuitful parents of crime and misery, and it is because we think that the wise foresight of the Victorian Legislature has recoguised this fact by endeavoring thus to multiply the present sources of employment in that colony, that we would recommend it to the attention and imitation of our own.