THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTH CROSS. FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1891.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8537, 10 April 1891, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTH CROSS. FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1891.

There is one aspect of the question of the claythe conflict between labour and capital—which is worthy of a little more consideration than it has yet received. It has long been the subject of remark and anxious discussion that the aggregation of large numbers of men and women working in particular trades in large factories lias a most deleterious effect on the health of those employed. Notwithstanding their higher wages and their greater comforts, the population of manufacturing towns can be readily distinguished by the most unobservant from that of the agricultural districts which surround them, and from which they or their parents have been drawn. Their physical strength has deteriorated ; their death rate and sickness rate are far higher than those of the country districts. More of the children are deformed or ricketty, or suffer from constitutional diseases that impair their vital powers. All this is the merest commonplace the subject has been discussed continually ; legislation has been evoked to give shorter hours to women and children ; the ventilation and other sanitary appliances of factories and workshops have been placed under the supervision of inspectors, and the rules and regulations have been rigorously enforced. But although many valuable improvements have been effected, and the working people have considerably benefited therefrom, the difference between the town factory operative and the agriculturist remains unchanged. For the progress of time has brought ameliorations in the condition of the agricultural labourer. His wages have been increased, and in England the great extension of the allotment system has enabled him to add many of the comforts of life to his still scanty resources. But no sanitary improvements and no Acts of Parliament can radically change the town-workers' mode of life. Whether lie works in a well-ventilated factory or an ill-ventilated one, may make a difference of years to his life, but it does not change the character of his work. For the most part, and in those manufactures which employ the

largest number of hands, the work remains monotonous, purely mechanical, employing continuously one set of muscles, and causing an extreme tension of one set of nerves. He has for all his hours of labour no change in his work, and from day to day no change. Year after year of his life is spent in an occupation which is wearisome by perpetual repetition of the same acts. He goes to his work with disgust, and he leaves it with brain and muscles fatigued and exhausted. There is a perpetual and monotonous noise which fatigues the ear, and a whirr of wheels which fatigues the eye. There is in the bestventilated factory nothing like the pure air of the woods and the fields, and in the most skilled mechanical labour of a large factory, minutely subdivided, nothing like the interest that attaches to agricultural work. The factory workman does his share in turning out some product of industry ; he seejs one part of the process, and no more ; what becomes of it after leaving his hands he neither knows nor cares. The agriculturist watches the operations ot Nature, aided by his own individual work. - The growth of the plants which he has sown, and : for which he prepared the ground, the produce of the trees he has planted, and the growth and multiplication of the animals he has tended, all touch his individuality. He feels an interest find a pride in them. He is leading a natural, and, consequently, a healthy life. The factory worker is little better than a part of a machine—an indispensable part no doubt—but still part of a machine. His attention must not stray for a moment his nervous system is strained to the uttermost, and although most of what he does becomes nearly or quite automatic, and he is unconscious of effort, yet he knows by experience that this automatism does not permit his attention to wander to any subject that can really interest or occupy his mind. All this tells upon his health, and he gradually loses his bodily vigour long before his brother in the fields has begun to feel the infirmities of age. The ever-increasing numbers who in Britain rush into the towns and are absorbed in manufactures, and the decreasing population of . the rural districts, have excited the most lively anxiety in the minds of those who study the social question. It seems impossible to prevent this aggregation in towns. It is quite impossible to make the town resident equal to the agriculturist in physical and mental health and vigour. The population is rapidly, in England, [ France, and Germany, deteriorating physically not only in spite of, but in consequence of the diminished deathrate. • For a diminished death-rate under such conditions as obtain in towns,,merely means that sickly children live to be sickly adults, marry early, have still more sickly children, and in their generation the race dies out, after much and prolonged suffering. - But just when students of social laws were in despair at the complexity of the problem presented to them, the solution has commenced. Just when these colonies, which ought, to have been for many years to come almost exclusively devoted to the cultivation of the soil, to pastoral pursuits, or to mining, had begun to make the artificial encouragement of manufactures a principal object, and to create in the New World the very evils which most of their inhabitants had left the Old World in order to escape, the wageearning classes themselves have roughly and abruptly proceeded to solve the problem. And they have done it in the simplest way. They have determined .that no man, and no association of men, possessing capital shall be able to invest it in any business concern beyond the personal supervision of two or three partners, with any reasonable prospect of obtaining a fair interest on their money, an insurance against risk, and a sufficient recompense for the skill, foresight, and other business qualities required in the management of any large enterprise. As soon as they see that these objects are in a fair way of attainment, they make their demand for higher wages. It is in vain to point out to them that a very insignificant rise in the rate of wages or diminution of the hours of labour may destroy that profit for which alone the business is conducted. That is no concern of theirs, they say ; they will take the risk of that; "the employers must raise their prices, or they must cease to compete with one another. But one .concession only gives a' good ground for another demand. And so itgoes on. Now as we have before pointed out in these columns, there are very few things, especially in this country, that are absolutely necessary for life, which a man cannot, if compelled to do it, make for himself. When boots and shoes become too dear, people here follow the example of the immense majority of mankind, and go barefoot. Time was, and not so very long ago, when in countries where art and literature had attained their highest perfection, where manners were courteous and elegant, where even articles of luxury were known, and yet the women spun and wove all the linen, and the handloom weaver wove the woollen fabrics necessary for clothing. It was only in the last century that it was customary in England, and in the present one has been customary in many countries of Europe, for the bride to bring to her new home a complete outfit of wearing apparel and household linen of her own weaving and makintr.

Some attempts have been made bybenevolent persons to re-establish these domestic industries, so much more durable and beautiful than anything that can be produced by maohinery ; but .these efforts have been made only with the view of giving help to the unfortunate, which should not degrade them as the recipients of alms. Thus much is certain that, without any retrogression in true civilisation, without subjecting ourselves to anything but most trifling and temporary inconveniences, we could dispense with all the objects about which these strikes and labour troubles exist. And in this colony, if every manufacturing establishment were to be shut up, and we had to import every article which we cannot make by hand labour —although the present inhabitants of the towns might and would suffer severely for the time— country on the whole would be the gainer—would be healthier, happier, and, in the end, richer.