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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1047, 11 March 1880, Page 2

We are quite in accord with a writer in the TJmmes Advertiser that there is no use in cloaking the fact that the colony of New Zealand at the present time, both in its centres of population and the country districts, is feeling acutely the recklessness which has hitherto characterised the Emigration Department in shipping to our shores hundreds of souls who, in addition to being penniless and strangers in the country, lack also the requisite physique to recommend them to the employers of labour in o.ur midst. In two of the most populous and wealthy districts of New Zealand, Otago and Canterbury, the " unemployed " are at this moment knocking at the doors of Government. No less than 600 are besieging the Chambers in "Wellington ; and in Dunedin and Southland the authorities have had either to find work for even a greater number or, probably experience a less desirable alternative ; and with these facts staring us in the face, with a future by no means so bright as the squanderers of our loans would have us obsequiously believe, the majority of the people's representatives "in Parliment assembled " bow submissively to Sir Julius Vogal and his London retinue. They regard these unemployed hundreds in their affliction with as bland a countenance as though they had only met en masse for the purpose of rendering to our illustrious knight, agent and staff, all the praise, honour, and glory which some few legislators in this country deem to be the due of his Colonial Court in London. The country at large, however, will regard the spectacle of so much congregated distress in a far different and more painful aspect, and will naturally conclude that the State must inevitably consider its duty in. so great emergency to consist in at once adopting effectual measures to stem the current of the increasing want which is begining to rear its gaunt shoulders in our most populous centres. The Minister of Public Works may perhaps be convinced that after all the mode of construction of our railways and other works, as far as the. employment of labour is concerned does not prove of so much advantage to the public exchequer as it does to the private purses of fortunate contractors j and after a little reflection he may possibly be led to believe that the country could be as well and economically served if the execution of its public works were organised on a different system altogether from that at present employed. In Poverty Bay we have no public works to relievethe overburdened state of the labor market if we except a few chains of roadway to be formed on the Ormond line, and we cannot but look forward with anxiety as to how the unemployed among us are to be relieved. The Oil Springs are only in the future, and of assistance from the Government we have but very faint hopes. But come what may, something will have to be done for our numerous unemployed, and it will not do to wait until actual distress sets in before some assistance is afforded.