THE LABOR QUESTION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 271, 7 April 1877, Page 20

THE LABOR QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL.

Sir, —There seems to be a unanimity of opinion amongst editors of newspapers in this colony with regard to the views they hold on the labor question, for nearly all of them persistently ignore the claims, the rights, and wishes of the working classes by refusing in-, sertion of their letters on matters affecting their interests. Now, this is to be regretted, for-undoubtedly working men feel aggrieved on this point: that they cannot have as free access to the columns of a newspaper to give publicity to their views and sentiments upon matters which vitally affect their condition and prospects in the country as the opposite, or influential, classes have. In fact there seems to be a sort of idea amongst editors that a bona fide working man has neither the ability nor intelligence to write an ordinary common sense letter to a newspaper, and those who do so are at once put down as some barber’s clerk or counter jumper. Of course there is a certain amount of truth in this idea : the traditional working man—the sort that employers now sigh for in vain—never aspired to such accomplishments as reading and writing ; but if they cannot write themselves they get others to do so for them. And here I may remark that it is a mistake to educate those who from the very nature of things must be hewers of wood and drawers of water all their lives; for it is evident to anyone that the more highly educated people become the less inclined they are to tackle hard work. I can assure you, sir, that the state of the labor market at the present moment all over this colony is simply deplorable so far as it affects those unfortunate people who are compelled to travel about the country in search of work. Everywhere one goes —to Napier (which place I have recently travelled overland from), Auckland, Taranaki, Wanganui, all these places are blocked up with a superabundancy of labor ; men are entirely at their wit’s end they don’t know where to steer, for their little savings are dwindling away while remaining in enforced idleness. The matter is becoming very serious and pressing. Yet in face of these facts there is no cessation of immigra,tion. They still come, to swell the number of idle discontented men who are brooding over the great moral wrong that is being inflicted upon them by the Government interfering with the natural laws which regulate the ebb and flow of populations from one country to another. Anyone not wilfully blind could understand that there was a limit to the requirements of employers in a country like New Zealand. But our Government act as if the demand for labor was unlimited, when it is notorious that the labor market is, as I have stated, overstocked to a degree never before experiencedand it is.the duty of the Press to acknowledge' this state of things, rather than ignore and suppress it. It is no use endeavoring to bolster up a rotten, fictitious state of things as one sees it here in Wellington. The old hard working classes are rapidly leaving the country, sir ; every steamer for Sydney takes away forty or fifty people of the very class that it would be most desirable to keep. But New Zealand has now lost its attractions for energetic pushing men. It is overdone ;it is no longer the working man’s paradise. The new chums will soon have it all to themselves. —I am, &c., F.C.

[Our correspondent complains that working men cannot get a hearing in the New Zealand Pressi This ia not so so far as this paper-, is

concerned, as we are always ready to insert letters which deserve it. But while giving insertion to this letter we should be sorry to endorse F.C.’s opinions on education, and we certainly think that his view of the state_of the labor market is not justified by fact. ED.