FACTORY LABOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13648, 16 January 1908, Page 4

FACTORY LABOUR.

We shall all agree most heartily that it is very much better for a community to have a dearth of labour than to have a swarm of unemployed, but that concurrence of opinion is clue plainly to a very natural desire to choose the least of two evils. For the hampering of industry by its inability to find labour is as distinctly an evil as the distressing of workmen by their inability to find employment, even though its effects are much more indirect, and the injury it inflicts upon the community less easily traced. For when an industry cannot expand to its normal proportions it does not usually attain that vigorous growth which is necessary in order that production may be carried on upon the best and most permanent conditions ; and its difficulties tend to weaken the general prosperity, which depends entirely upon great and profitable production. As will be seen from an article in to-day's Herald, a dearth of female labour is having a depressing influence upon our Auckland factories. Various causes have led to this, but one common cause is probably behind the dearth of female labour and the dearth of labour generally. Attention has frequently been drawn to the fact that almost all labour is scarce, and that numerous industries are hampered by the impossibility of obtaining enough men to develop them. If this has a meaning it is that the population of the country is increasing at a lesser rate than our industries could profitably absorb, and the remedy is to encourage immigration upon general lines. A country that could easily carry several millions of people is distinctly underpopulated when it contains consid-, erably less than a single million ; and the chief symptom of underpopulation is when it is impossible to obtain the labour to effectively carry on, and to adequately develop, even the most promising industries.