Looking for Work.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1842, 9 June 1886, Page 2

Looking for Work.

A working man named Josiah Claridge, whom we knew a good many years back in Wanganui, has written a letter to the Evening Post in which be gives a deplorable picture of the state of things for the laborihg classes in Castle Point, the Seventy Mile Bush and the Napier district. Claridge writes from Kilbitnie " Owing to the vicissitudes incidental to colonial life, I, like many others, have been compelled to travel in search of employment. With that object in view, and having with me the best of recommendations, I travelled through to Napier, with the re.-ult of finding that from the great influx of people from the Middle Island, every department was more than filled. After advertising in various ways and receiving no replies, I returned back through the Seventy Mile Bush, but the only thing that turned up was a subcontract of fencing for the railway, which 1 took far under the cut rent rate, but which I was glad to obtain as nothing better offered. I have since travelled through to Castlepoint in quest of employment as carpenter or cook on a station, either of which I could undertake, but in every case I found a score or more had been before me. It may appear startling to some when I state that, from my own personal observation, there are at the present time between Wellington City and Napier upwards of one thousand men roaming the country from station to station in a state of semi-starvation, vainly seeking for work, which is not at present attainable.” If these statements are true, then it seems to ns to be a wretched onto orae of borrowing millions and loading the colony with a crushing debt, to find that a host of working men are wandering through the Castlepoint, Seventy Mile Bush and Napier districts vainly seeking lor employment. We offer the statements of Josiah Claridge to Sir Julius Vogel for his careful consideration.