Labor Condition in Westralia.

Thames Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 8608, 12 March 1897, Page 2

Labor Condition in Westralia.

Every legitimate capitalist will be driven out of the country, unless the Government can be made to see that its claims are untenable. It seems to regard the mining industry as capable of answering any demand that may be made upon it. Iv truth, mining is the most risky enterprise a man can enter iuto, and it is a good Held indeed on I which, taking the good with the bad, the gold won does not cpst more than i its value to produce. Yet, see how ] we are treated as compared with other' industries. A man who takes up agricultural country pays a rental of sixpence per acre per annum. He has certain small improvements to effect, ' and at the end of twenty years—or at a cost of 10s per acre—the land be-; comps his own. Now, the miner pays i £1 per acre per annum, and the labor : conditions tax him to tho extent of another £70 per annum -r- that is to say, one man's wages, at £4 per week at loast, for evory three acres. When you consider that there must be a large proportion of worthless mines, and that tho best mining lease will contain acres of land off the reef and useless, it is not too much te say that , only one acre in every hundred is worth ' anything. Thus, takiug the good with the bad, we are taxed to the extent of £7,000 per annum per acre for all the valuable mineral land on the field. It is useless to say that the money we speud in labour is not a tax. We are compelled to employ the labor whether we want to or not, and we are not allowed to employ it in the places where it will be to the best advantage. In the other colonies they have labor conditions, but there labor is cheap, and plenty of skilled miners are available. I am sure that there are not 2,000 skilled miners in thin colony, and

it is simply heartbreaking to have to pay £4 and £4 10s per week to men who cannot do ten-shillings' worth of mining in that period. Goldmining requires skill of a very high order. What would the Premier say if he had to employ forty shoemakers as clerks ? And yet these shoemakers, provided that they understood the bare rudiments of caligraphy, could do clerks' work just as well as tho majority of the men on the fields can do that of the miners Out at Lake Way I have had to thiow up numbers of leases because men cannot be obtained at all, and throughout the fields mining is being carried on under disadvantages that threaten to strangle

the industry. Tho fields themselves | are splendid. You will hare noticed j the magnificent return got Bur-1 bank's Grand Junction. We! 1., erery | ounce of that gold cost £8 to obtain. The wardens are fairly liberal in the granting of exemption ; but we don't j want our vast interests to be dependent j upon the liver of a warden. We j want to see laws framed that j we can comply with, and that will lend themselves to the economic development of the country. I think that the law should be altered so as to compel the expenditure of a certain amount per annum per acre, and that tho amalgamation of leases should receive every encouragement. The only justi- ■ fication for the action of the Government is that it secures a large amount ! of employment for the community. But I why should the mining industry— ,

which, as I have pointed out before, is the most risky of all industries—be the only one taxed to secure this employment ? Why should the holder of every lease of twenty acres, be compelled to pay £4 a -week each to eight men—not miners, mark you, but the majority completely ignorant of the work, for all the unemployed of the Eastern colonies, who like to come over here, no matter what may have been their previous callings. These are a few of the questions that I should like the Premier and his ministers to ask themselves—Perth paper.