LAND AND LABOR.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1526, 18 November 1873, Page 20

LAND AND LABOR.

The following article is from the New Zealand Herald, of the 7.th November :- While, every now and then, there is a cry in the Colonies for cheap labor, and great things looked for when that era arrives, it is instructive to watch the gradual and sure increase in the wages of labor in the various European countries, as civilization, advances. It is well that this should be. The industries which cannot thrive without crushing under grinding penury the mass of a people, had better perish, or become the exclusive property of the races of the East, where a thousand starve that one may live at ease. Every improvement in machinery, every invention tending to bring the forces of nature more under human control, every extension of manufacture and commerce to which this control leads, every discovery which makes intelligence in the laborer take the place of mere brute force, and, above ail, every additional facility in the acquisition of land, is a barrier against the return of an order of things for which some few occasionally sigh. In no country is this better illustrated than in France, whose wonderful recuperative powers and latent wealth have just astonished the world. The secret, iu her case, is not far to seek, and lies only in the wide ownership of the land, and the general distribution' of wealth among her people. France, today, is in the condition iu this respect in which England was when she possessed the independent yeomanry and the bold peasantry who then funned her pride, but who now rank as laborers, living on, but holding no share whatever in her soii. With a population of thirty-five millions, France lias eight millions of electors —in other words, of adult males—upon her roll. No less than five millions of these are absolute proprietors, living on their own land, —under the shade of their own vines and their own fig-trees. The thriftiness and the industry of the French peasant are proverbial, and enable the Government, in time of need, to draw from them the great loans,of which the late Emperor Napoleon first proved the possibility. Issuing direct to the investor in debentures of an amount that would appear to us absurdly small, producing as little, in some cases, as a pound a-year in interest to the lender, Napoleon, during the Crimean war, raised £30,000,000 among his own people. It was a new operation, so entirely different from our own practice of floating loans among great speculators, that it excited considerable attention at the time. The greater and more equal diffusion of wealth among the French is a sufficient explanation. Of the five million landed proprietors, only fourteen thousand possess more than 100 acres each. The remaining 4,080,000 own and cultivate farms of 5 to 100 acres. Of these, nearly four millions hold above twenty acres, while one million find a home on plots of five to twenty acres only. Deducting the sons of these landed proprietors, there remain less than one million of what we call "working men" inhabiting the large towns, or employed in all industries at wages, throughout the Republic. Cultivation is canned on by families, and the demand for their labor significantly shows in the custom of fixing the holidays of children during the vintage or harvest months, when their services cannot be dispensed with at home. The wages of laborers, despite the cheapness of living, are Ids. per week for the com.monest unskilled labor, and lads of sixteen are, during some seasons, gladly em« ployed at this rate. In France we see this result following years of violent political change and a social upheaval the most terrible the world lias yet witnessed. The more equal distribution of wealth was a boon purchased at this cost, and is the chief consolation that her leading statesmen and economists have found for the century of trouble by which it has been earned. In America we witness the same result, accomplished by the abundance of the laud and the operation of natural laws untraversed by special class legislation throwing difficulties in the way of its acquisition. In the older and more crowded of the two countries, estates were violently seized and arbitrarily divided. _ In the newer world there was laud enough for all. It was only necessary to leave open the way to its acquisition. Occupation followed as a matter of course. As with them it must also be with us. While land can be acquired at low rates there will be a constant thinning out the ranks among those who live by wages; keeping down the supply and increasing the average earnings of those w ho remain. This is the natural, healthy condition of a new country. So long as it continues, settlement will extend, but wages cannot fall to the level that has for centuries made life miserable to so many millions. Such a result we are little likely to see with our own abundant lands, with the Australian colonies near, and with America rivalling them and ourselves in the inducements held out for immigration. The matter may be worth a thought, in this light, to those who talk glibly of great manufacturing industries suddenly growing up-among us, and forced into premature existence by "protective" legislation. That New Zealand must eventually become a great exporting manufacturing country, its coal-mines and great waterpower proclaim. That we may in the meantime encourage by judicious aid the steady growth of• manufacturing industry is equally clear. But in all our calculations, whether in agriculture or manufactures, we may throw aside the most remote reliance on what is called S( cheap labor," so long as new lands remain to be

settled here or offer their attractions within easy reach elsewhere.