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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 645, 8 March 1879, Page 2

There can be no question, we think, that a great drawback to the prosperity of New Zealand, is the apparently unconquerable desire for men and women to congregate in the towns and cities of both Islands, instead of seeking profitable openings in the numerous up-country settlements. Women who would be invaluable on farms, prefer inferior service in town. Men who can break in horses, use the plough, drive, and do the work which demands muscle, are seen loafing about back slums and narrow lanes, preferring to accept any hand-to-mouth employment, rather than leave the corners of public houses and the company of idlers. Stump politicians are no friends of their fellow men who aie for ever telling them what legislation can do for them, but never tell them what they may do for themselves. It is notorious — a fact patent to all — that our towns are too thickly, and our country settlements too sparsely populated. We all want to be consumers instead of becoming pro ducers, and hence so much of discontent through the country. There are too many shops and stores, too many town shanties ; too many artificial ways for ekeing out a living in the towns of a new country. Land has not been as easily obtainable as it should have been; but with all drawbacks,, land has always been procurable where there has been a desire for it on the part of those who know how to turn the soil to account when they had got it. In the town there are many luxuries procurable by the sacrifice of independence ; by the running into debt ; by sponging on friends j by giving orders and promises to pay which are never honored. In the country there is abundance of all that man's needs require. There is the health which (

springs from out-door life. There is employment for all afc high rates of remuneration, and there are fewer incentives and fewer opportunites to run into temptation or excess. There are young men handling ribbons who would be better employed wielding the axe, and too many like them growing up with a distaste for honest labor. Our boys are not even learning trades. They must needs become clerks because it is " genteel." They pester members of the Government — it is weary work on both sides — to put them into the Post Office, the Telegraph Office, any department of the Civil Service, where the salary no doubt is small, but the pretensions are gi-eat. And what is to become of the young men who are lounging about publichouse bars, betting and playing billiards, hanging perhaps about theatres when any low company comes to the place. How are these young men to be turned to any good account for themselves, or others, save out in the country, doing their day's work in the free air and pleasant sunshine. This state of matters should be fairly looked in the face. There is no use in blinking over it. It is not burying our heads in the sand and refusing to recognise hard facts that we shall make our position as a nation. Things cannot always go on as at present. Prosperous times and few taxes would be very acceptable, but even these would not much help the folks who need help most, unless they were also determined to help themselves, and to live within their means by dispensing with luxuries they cannot properly afford.