The Truth About Victoria

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 100, 24 March 1888, Page 3

The Truth About Victori a

The following letter which appeared in the Dunedin Star a tow days' ago, speaks for itself. The writer is a tradesman well known in Otago, where he resided twenty-seven years : —

" Melbourne, March 12. Sir— Will you allow me a few lines of your space to enable me to give a few words of caution to the working men ,of New Zealand, particularly to the tradesmen who are about to go over to Melbourne. There has been such a rush of people from Sydney and Adelaide that there are more people about the streets of Melbourne waiting employment than there are in Dunedin, I know there is a lot of work going on here just now, but where a man is wanted there are three hundred to take the billet. Advise all tradesmen and laborers to stay in New Zealand if they can get a crust of bread where they are. This place is right enough, but people have I been coming here at the rate of thousands per week during the past eight months from all parts, and they will take any wage that is offered to them. There are painters here who are working for six shillings and sixpence per day. A first-class painter and grainer is lucky to get eight shillings per day and then he is likely to be in work -three weeks, and idle when the Exhibition is done. I can see what is coming — starvation for hundreds. I was speaking the: other day to an old friend, an ex-Dunedinite, Mr Robert Howorth, who was my employer when in Dunedin. He has been here between thirty and forty years, and he tells me that he can see what is coming. He says that there will be such a collapse here soon that Melbourne has never experienced the like of. I would strongly advise people against coming here for tho present."