THE SCARCITY OF RURAL LABOUR.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 959, 8 March 1917, Page 6

THE SCARCITY OF RURAL LABOUR.

| To the Editor of THE SUN. i Sir, —The rural labour problem is by no means simply a question of wages, and your query as to -whether the farmer is offering a sufficiently generous remuneration, -while pertinent, hardly goes far enough. I think you must go back to the ques- ! fion of why a man works at all. !If a labouring man wants to save j money, or, in other words, to belter , his economic position by accumujlating all he can earn above what ;is necessary to keep himself and his | family comfortably, he can do it I with much greater certainty in the ! country than in the town. A j labourer on 10/- a day will spend j nearly all his earnings on himself j and his family if he lives in the city, i Apart from the simple necessities of i life, the city-dweller is surrounded Jail day with temptaions to spend jon non-essentials, with the result all ihe earns disappears as by magic, and j at the end of Ihe year he is as poor as he was at the beginning. The : same man can get £2 Hi/- a week and his keep in the country, if his wife cares to assist, and in addition to jliving comfortably they could come ,'back to town at the end of the year with £IOO to their credit. Only rejcently I ran across a well-known j North Canterbury sheep-farmer who j spent the day going round Christ- ; church in a motor car trying to gel a i married couple at the wages I have I mentioned, but without success. The explanation, of course, is that it is not really a question of money at all. The city with its life, activity, and amusements is more attractive, and unfortunately we have a large number of persons in the community who as long as they can get any sort of a decent living in town won't go to the country, no matter what wages .are offered. The shortage of labour enables the most thriftless and inefficient members of the community to get jobs in the cities at a living wage, and as long as they can do this they are content to hang about town and pester the Government about the cost of high living. There is no cure for the problem short of a forcible reorganisation of the labour resources of the country, and although I do not wish to throw cold water on the efforts of the Efficiency Board, the fact that the persons who are likely to be subjected to the board's experiments all have votes, makes me rather pessimistic regarding the result.—l am, etc., CIVIS. Christchurch, March 7.