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he is satisfied if he earns sufficient to pay his board and put a little on the totalisator. He has no ambition to rise beyond that, but the American goes in for earning money. I have been a manufacturer now in this colony for something like fifteen or sixteen years, and have been connected with the leather trade thirty-seven years, and I never had a more willing and a better class of men to deal with than in our colony. As a body of men I admire them, but there is a want of ambition in their trade. It does not matter how you try to get that ambition into them, somehow or another if there is going to be a horse-race meeting, or a football match, or an athletic meeting, that stands 104. Mr. Hardy.] Do you make up much material to be manufactured in the colonies? —Yes ; the tanners are making rapid strides in New Zealand. 105. Is it a very large amount you use ?—- Yes, we use a great deal. 106. Could you not equalise matters by reducing the price of the raw material which comes to y OU ? The raw material is not affected very much. If the Customs could take off some of the duty it would assist us, no doubt, Then you have the tanner stepping in. 107. The skins, the hides, and all that sort of thing: could you equalise it by giving the farmers less for their skins ?—I do not think they would take less. But I do not think there is anything to find fault with in the leather. Directly the tanner here asks more than the English and the American tanner, of course he loses the sale. 108. Supposing you could get your skins a little cheaper, could you not prepare your colonial leather at a smaller price?—l do not thing so ; the labour is so expensive. That is not so with our friends ; but any saving in that direction in the colony, through the expense of handling, would 109. The labour for handling the material is greater than the raw material itself ?—Yes, I think that is so in the colony. 110. Mr. Laurenson.] You say your son served four times as much on a machine m America as one of. your men is serving on a similar machine in your factory; how do you account _ for that ? It is a technical part of the trade. The machines are exactly the same, but the conditions are totally different. If we could manufacture, say, ten thousand pairs a day, or five thousand pairs a day, of five or six lines, our men would become more expert. I am not blaming the men altogether.' For instance, my son was in Chicago with a house that had an output of ten thousand pairs a day done. When the war broke out, he was sent for by a firm whom he was with previously to come back, because he was an expert in his particular line. He is the only one left now in the factory on that line. They get large contracts—one contract for 150,000 pairs and another large one; and when working on large contracts like that they become expert. Our orders in New Zealand are very small indeed, and the conditions of the trade in this colony are totally different to those in America. I should like to see some of our men go—and I should like to go myself—to America and England, and see the conditions under which they work there. 111. Did you ever hear of any one connected with the factory state that their wages should be increased by giving less to the farmer ?—No. I think if you were to touch the farmers you would get into hot water. 112. Captain Russell] You made a very interesting statement about the want of ambition in the young operatives :is that attributable to any cause you know of ?—I have made a study of this thing for some years, and the only cause I can think of is that the freedom of the colonial life and the conditions of life are so totally different to what they are in the Old Country, and the want of control of the young people. Our young people are under no control by their parents. After the boy or girl is apprenticed, the parents take no interest in the welfare of that child. They (the apprentices) come into the factory merely as a machine. Unless you send for these parents you never see them from the day they arrive with their child until it leaves. The apprentices grow up in an indifferent state. As soon as the boy begins to get about he becomes a man, and does as he likes. There is not that ambition to excel at his trade. Take a boy at fourteen, for instance —the first year is a very difficult year with all boys, more or less; the second year, if he is smart—we have good men looking after our apprentices —and a good boy, he gets on splendidly ; the third year I have had numbers of boys showing as good work as any man in the department. After that the boy declines, until at the end of his fifth year you are very glad to get rid of many of them. 113. Do you imagine that to be attributable to the knowledge of the socialistic trend of our legis- . lation ?—No doubt. Mr. Minnie, of Messrs. Minnie and Day, employs a great many girls in a biscuitfactory, and he has found it necessary, on account of the men and women "skylarking" when working together, to alter their rules. He decided that the girls should have half an hour for dinner, and go off an hour earlier. This was arranged with the girls and Mr. Minnie, but then the Inspector of Factories walked in and said the girls must have a full hour for their dinner. The following day Mr. Minnie went round the factory as usual at luncheon-time, and found the girls were not there as he had arranged, and he asked the foreman about it. The foreman told him the Inspector told them that they must have a full hour for dinner. The effect of it was this : when Mr. Minnie spoke to them about it they thought that Mr. Ferguson had the full power and control of going into that factory and doing as he liked. Mr. Minnie gave all those girls notice of dismissal. That brought Mr. Ferguson down, and Mr. Ferguson was told that if he was going to tell them what to do he must pay them. The people have got the idea that the proprietor has lost the control of his business through this legislation. 114. Do you think that the young operatives themselves feel that they are going to be kept down if the present system of legislation is continued, or. that it is going to elevate their chance of becoming master tradesmen ?—I do not think there is any ambition. 115. I want to get the reason why there is not this ambition?—lt is very had to say what is the cause of it. I know that our old members—Mr. Arnold and Mr. Tanner—had an ambition to rise, but we do not see that ambition now. 116. Mr. Tanner.] Did not this demoralisation exist twenty years ago, but was not so_ visible, because at that time the great bulk of our employes were English born ?—I think that was it. 117. And the decline of the European percentage, is it not ?—Yes.