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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 22, 30 May 1901, Page 15

Mb. Singleton, the new cheese expert to the Government arrived in Auckland by the Sierra. He will visit the principal dairy factories in Taranaki on his way to Wellington. The prospects of the iron trade in New Zealand were referred to by Mr. Booth, who appeared for the employers recently before the Arbitration Court, as follows : — ' The employers who have appeared in this case are, in my opinion, too sanguine, but it has been affirmed by witnesses, and I agree with them, that there is no hope at all that the present rate of wages can be maintained. Of course, there will always be a certain amount of work for some men at high wages, but I do not believe for a moment that the general average rate of boilermakers can be kept up to 10s per day of eight hours, in view of the fact that there is a falling off in the iron trade in England, on the Continent, and in America. If the court knew as well as I do what a collapse means in the iron trades they would view with a little more alarm the invasion of the Colony by German goods. I shall be very much surprised if German buckets (for dredges) are not in this Colony within a few months, and I can assure the court they will be landed here at little more than the raw material costs to import.'