A BAD STATE OF THINGS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2237, 3 June 1881, Page 3

A BAD STATE OF THINGS.

The Oamaru correspondent of the Dunedin " Morning Herald " telegraphed on Tuesday, May 31st, as follows : " The condition of the unemployed in North Otago is very bad, and tho need of doing something to relieve their hardship is urgent. The number of men wanting work — not of the kind who ask for a job and pray they won't get it, but of men steady, intelligent, and respectable—is almost incredible. On Saturday the hands at the small railway extension at Ngapara were paid off, and work stopped. Men lately have been coming to the Ngapara earthwork formation at the rate of twenty and thirty per day, begging for a job, tramping from Oamaru on the chanoe ot gotting something, and leaving without being able to get taken on. So disappointed, they have had to beg their bread in the neighborhood, as they have no money in thoir pockets, and the farmers can give them no employment. Some of the men paid off from Ngapara have left their tents behind them and taken their Bwags, going in search of employment. From various quarters I hear that shearers and harvesters have oxercised more care with their earnings—saving more and spending less—than in past years, but they have had to live upon their earnings, and married men especially are badly off. Steady men who can do any kind of hard work, and whose departure would be a loss to the country, say that if employment does not offer quickly they will have no alternative but to go to Sydney, provided they can raise funds for the passage. It is deplorable to see so many fine men reduced to such straits, tramping the roads almost aimlessly. This telegram is written after five days' observation."