The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2211, 8 June 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 1870.

The report of the Select Committee of the Council appointed to consider the petition of the unemployed, is not likely to please those who were instrumental in getting it up. It discloses a state of relationship between capital and labor which many were hardly prepared to expect. It shows that if any have reason to complain, it is not those who live by labor, but those who are prepared to employ them, provided they can see a fair return for the risk of investing their capital. If this abnormal condition were to continue long, the consequences are foretold in the report: the laborer now receiving more than his share »,f the products of manufacture would soon meet with

competitors in those who for the pre* sent abandoning their occupation lest their capital should be wasted, find it their interest to work for wages. That this process is now going on is told in most of the conclusions of the Committee. Admitting that there are more than the usual number of unemployed in Dunedin, it is evident that not only is that attributable to the abandonment of several pursuits and the checking of new enterprises, but that the evil is intensified by some who would have been employers of labor, themselves becoming laborers. Perhaps this natural remedial process may not force itself prominently upon popular attention ; but that, ultimately, such must be the consequence of so high a rate of wages as to render the employment of capital unproductive, must be evident. Perhaps those most deeply interested are the last to perceive it, and are disposed to grumble at the enforced idleness incident to such a state of affairs. No one ought to blame the workman for this. Society has not yet arrived at so thorough an organisation as to apportion the rate of wages to the fund out of which they are to be paid ; and to say to the employer you shall have so much per cent, for your money, and to the employed you shall have so much a week for your labor. But while this is not specifically done, ultimately capital and labor adjust themselves. We are told in the report that agriculture is so unprofitable that farmers cannot afford to pay the high rate of wages demanded. Ther'e are some few evidences that, notwithstanding this difficulty, farmers are sufficiently independent to be able to say to the most valuable class of laborers, the married men with families, that they will not employ them ; so that it is fair to imagine there has been some of the usual style of agricultural exaggeration in the statement. Put however this may be, it is plain that agricultural produce has found its level iu the world’s market sooner than the wages of those by whom it is produced. Nothing, in fact, is more puzzling to the social economist than tire long continuance of exceptionally high wages in Otago. The tendency of produce and wages is to the world s level. Put wages have been higher in Otago for some time than in other Provinces, and notoriously higher than in the neighboring Colonies. So long as prices were exceptionally high too, this did not matter. Put now the supply of agricultui’al produce is so large that markets outside the Province must be discovered, and as in them the merchants of Otago encounter the competition of countries where labor and the cost of production is lower, our farmers must accept prices that will not pay them, or have their goods thrown upon their hands. This is now a laborer’s question. If farming will not pay, no artificial system, however specious, can prevent land being thrown out of cultivation and remaining untilled, until a reduction in the cost of working it, either by the employment of machinery or a less rate in wages, enables the capitalist to reap a fair return for his investment. With wages so exceptionally high, employment will be fitful. No permanent engagement can be entered into, for men will be employed to complete given jobs, and those -finished, they must take their chance of further work turning up. The evidence seems to point to this process being now in extensive operation, and its result 'is that the wages of many arc virtually reduced one-half through their being one-half -of their time unemployed. Although these persons who are “ in a chronic state of “ unemployment,” <( set their faces de- “ cidedly ’against any reduction in the “ present rate of wages,” because by working “ two or three days they can “ support themselves for a week,” confer a benefit upon the lucky few who chance to have permanent employment, they inflict serious damage upon society, and tend to keep the Province poor. Men hall employed are usually too demoralised to do a fair day’s work tor a fair day’s wage. Their labor is not so effective while they are employed, as it would be were they in the habit Of working steadily and persistently. We do not now speak merely of those who add to habits of indolence those vicious courses implied in W atts’s couplet— For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do. Even the most sober and correct cannot work so effectively while engaged, if half their time unemployed. It follows that the development of the Province is retarded beyond computation by this abnormal state of the labor market, without any corresponding advantage to the laborer himself. He now, through willing or enforced idleness, only earns the sum he would receive regularly, week by week, were his employment permanent. But all other classes suffer through drones having to be fed out of diminished production. Under such circumstances there can be little or no addition to capital. Thus the fund for paying

wages not increasing, everything remains at a standstill. In other words, the Province must be retrograding, for in national matters not to advance is to go back. That the remedial process is going on there cannot be a doubt. Men hitherto unaccustomed to manual labor are becoming pressed into the rank of workmen. Artisans will not consent to starve if they can obtain a day’s work even at work not requiring skilled labor. Otago, in the language of Mr Mi on in, “ is suffering a reco- “ very.” The petition of the unemployed has raised a feeling of sympathy for capitalists and respectable laborers. No men arc greater enemies to labor than laborers themselves. It cannot be expected that they should act more disinterestedly than other men. They do right to obtain the highest wages they can get, nor are we believers in a low rate of wages; but when work becomes scarce because of its being unprofitable to employ labor, true wisdom is shown by accepting employment on fair terms to employer and employed.