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removal from crowded centres. There need be no more trouble than before in regard to the sustentation of the restricted persons family, as such a vagrant is of no use to his family, but only an added burden. While for the honest workman, temporarily "unemployed," every sympathy should be shown and assistance to work given, for the other class, the " unemployable," there should be compulsory labour, even if under regulations of severity such as obtain in prisons. On the Continent similar schemes have been tried with complete success, and accounts of them have been published in detail in the Journal of the Department of Labour, New Zealand. The United States have also begun to apply Government solutions to the beggar and tramp problem. Massachusetts has purchased 2,000 acres of cheap but improvable land. The soil is both marshy and rocky, but it can be cleared and made profitable for agriculture. To this farm every tramp legally convicted of vagrancy will be sent for two years. He will be employed in making roads and building houses on the farm, in digging drains, in clearing, ploughing, sowing, reaping, and in all the labour of a farm that has to be created from a wilderness. The tramps will be well fed and comfortably housed during the period of their detention. Any man who " asks for a home " can be sent to the farm for one year, but those convicted of vagrancy are sentenced for two years. When the relief of Government subsidies now given to Charitable Aid Boards is considered, the above plan may prove to be a very cheap and effective mode of dealing with a corroding social ulcer. As soon as the farm is roaded, cultivated, fenced, &c, the place could be disposed of, and a new start in the wilds commenced. CO-OPERATIVE WORKS. Although no actual administrative power rests with the Labour Department, but is entirely in the hands of the Crown Lands and Public Works Departments, still, as men are sent to these works through the Labour Department agencies, we hear a great deal that men have to say as to the way the contracts are let, paid for, &c. It appears to be a fact that not only is the work as cheaply done, but as perfectly done as by the tender system. More work in superintendence is required from the Government officers, but the cost of the extra time spent by the staff in doing this is more than made up-by the elimination of the middle-man's profit. The moral effect upon the workman certainly should not be lost sight of ; it is a pleasure to watch men working straightforwardly for themselves, and not with a continual glance over the shoulder at a master. The regulations lately issued, to the effect that co-operative works should be visited at short intervals by the nearest agent of the Labour Department, will doubtless have a good effect. If the men believe that they have a grievance, it is far better that it should be known and remedied, if found to really exist, than that they should go on working under a sense of injury. One source of trouble has been that the earnings of men employed by the Public Works Department are said to have been calculated at a rate of Is. a day higher than those similarly engaged under the Crown Lands Department. The assertion is made that, if the lower rate is based on current wages, so many wet days intervene (especially in bush country) that only very exceptional men can make a proper wage and support their families. On the other hand, it must be said that very decent earnings have been made by some of the men employed under the Crown Lands Department. There can be little doubt that the one thing needful to make co-operative works successful would be the complete carrying-out of the " alternate " system. This allows a labourer to work half-time on a Government road or railway and the other half of his time on some adjacent land allotted to him. This mode of at once conducting public works and settling people on the land was the strongest plea for the institution of the Department of Labour. The intention was not only to assist men to leave the crowded towns, but to settle them and their families in the rural districts, and thus to destroy the incentive to disastrous centralisation of labour. The same defect—or, rather, misfortune—that has crippled to a great extent the mission of this department—viz., the want of suitable land upon which men are to be placed, still acts as a drag upon the very admirable "alternate" system of public works. There are many things necessary for the success of such a system, and they do not always group themselves into a required position. A railway or road for which money has been voted by Parliament (an important item in the consideration) is not often found with suitable land alongside. It may be that the road or railway passes through a Native block, or through broken country, or through land already in private hands. It is perfectly useless giving to poor men broken land in back districts, nor can they be given titles to other people's property. So it follows that unless land can be resumed from private persons under the Land for Settlements Act, or purchased from the Natives, and that these lands require roading or are traversed by a railway in course of construction, no large extent of work under the " alternate " system will be gone on with at present, but the ordinary co-operative contract must keep its place. It is to be hoped that the work, now under consideration of Government, of draining a large swamp in the North Island by means of labour employed on the " alternate " system may prove as successful as the same system when it was applied to the Koo-wee-rup Swamp in South Australia, and on which hundreds of industrious families are now settled. DEPARTMENTAL WORK. This has been constantly increasing as the department gained in experience and usefulness. Its first powers were exercised upon the " unemployed " question and the distribution of labour. To this was added the supervision of factories (employing about thirty thousand hands), then of shops (seven thousand), then of the labour laws generally, including Truck, Employers' Liability, Workmen's Wages, Shipping and Seamen, &c. Latterly has been added Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration, the woman's branch office, the inspection of shearers' accommodation, and of registryoffices. These duties, requiring incessant watchfulness and tact on the part of the departmental

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