WAGES.

Otago Witness, Issue 879, 3 October 1868, Page 1

WAGES.

It is not a little difficult to understand why the rate of wages on the one hand, and the prices of provisions on the other, should be dearer in this than they are in the other Provinces of New Zealand. Have latitude and longitude anything to do with it ? If a rumpsteak can be purchased s&y for sixpence in Canterbury, why should it cost a shilling in Ota^o 1 What is there in the climate or the soil of Otago unfavourable to the production of rumpsteaks ? Or if a ploughman will take say L3O a year in Canterbury, why should he demand L6O a year in Otago ? The moment a man crosses the boundary line of these Provinces, he stands surrounded by wholly different circumstances, so far as prices and values are concerned. This is a problem we confess ourselves unable to solve. We can only offer a conjecture that some artificial process must be at work of which the public generally has little or no suspicion. The complaints made by employers of labor as to its excessive dearness in this Province, are certainly not unfounded ; but it seems to be forgotten that the price of lahpur depends upon the price of commodities, and that so long as the latter are exorbitant, the former must necessarily keep pace with it. As money means nothing more than what can be purchased with it, the wages 4wnde,d by $c working piasses must

rule in accordance with the prices demanded by the shopkeepers. The farmer or the squatter, who supplies rations as well as wages, is apt to overlook the fact that his case, as an employer of labour, is an exception — the rule being to supply wages only.. When the price of his produce falls in the market, he considers himself entitled to a. reduction in wages, and the expectation is natural enough. But it is disappointed, and will continue to be so. Oats and wool may fall lower and lower than they have fallen yet, but that alone will not reduce the wages of the ploughman or the shearer. A correspondent suggests, as a probable explanation of the high rate at present paid for farm and station labour, that ( it must be due, partly, to the conduct of the employers themselves who, living in most cases far from this, the principal labour market in the Province, either leave the engagement of their hands until they absolutely cannot do without them, and then have to pay whatever wages are demanded — or else allow themselves, as a rule, to be forced into paying very high wages because a few of their number may happen to do so. J Contingencies of this kind no doubt affect the rate of wages in the interior to some extent ; but — seeing that they are merely partial in their operation, they cannot be taken as a satisfactory answer to the question at issue. Nor will it do to argue, as we sometimes hear it argued, that the mutual interests of employers and employed demand a reduction in the rate of wages correspondinglwith the fall in the price of produce. Such an argument cannot be addressed to the whole body of the employed, simply because they will not listen to it; it can be used only in private negotiations between master and man. If such a suggestion were made to the labour market for its consideration, the answer would be that a lower rate of wages could not be accepted on account of the actual cost of living. The interests of the Province would of course be materially influenced for the better by a voluntary reduction in the rate of wages ; but we might as well talk about a voluntary reduction in the price of produce.