THE LABOUR MARKET, JUNE 23, 1880.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 375, 25 June 1880, Page 14

THE LABOUR MARKET, JUNE 23, 1880.

Mr. Skene reports a slightly improved demand, and we may look for better things with the lengthening day. Most certainly affairs cannot be worse, either with employers or employees. Spring work will soon demand all hands for farm work. Wages are keeping-much lower than for past years. The building trade is more active than usual, and there are not so many idlers hanging about town. A few couples, farm hands, milking boys, and trained girls are asked for ; shopmen and clerks are too plentiful. It is earnestly to be hoped that the shipments of oats to Britain, will prove a success, and solve the farmers great difficulty ; then employment will be plentiful, and wages better. There is no change in the rates of pay since last week.

Our contemporary the Saturday Advertiser is about to publish an essay by Sir George Grey, entitled " The Irish Land Question and Home Rule." The reputation of the author is a sufficient guarantee for the justice of his views and the ability with which they will be put forward. We have no doubt this essay will be eagerly looked for and read with interest and attention. By way of contrast to the reactionary measures against the religious education in France, Les Missions Catholiques quotes the following words of Sir James Langden. Governor of the Isle of Ceylon, who recently visited the establishment of the Sisters of the Holy Family. " I cannot help recognising," he said, "that everywhere Catholics are animated by the same spirit, and that the education given in their echools is the best possible* as nothing is more pernicious than education deprived of that moral direction which can only assure to the young future happiness." Sir James Langden is a Protestant, but, he agrees with many of his co-religionists in acknowledging the superiority of Catholic educational establishments.