The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, FERBUARY 29, 1908. A COLOSSAL BLUNDER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 384, 29 February 1908, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, FERBUARY 29, 1908. A COLOSSAL BLUNDER.

Mr C. H. Gibbons, a well-known Canadian journalist, wlio recently visited New Zealand, contributes to the Vancouver World a long and interesting article. In writing of labour legislation in New Zealand, he says Its effect is seen in the inevitable consequences entailed by fantastic disregard ofnatural industrial, and economic laws. Faced on the one hand by the inexorable conditions of supply and demand, and on the other by a constantly augmented cost of production by reason of the-de-mands of labour and of an army of petty officials created to find technicalities under "which to harass his operations, the large industrial operator is being driven from New Zealand. Captains of industry here are penalised, not encouraged, and the business life of the country is in consequence becoming more and more mechanical and automatic, rather than expansive and .progressive. Manufacturers and other employers of labour in New Zealand tell you that the New Zealand workman of to-day is less efficient, less painstaking, and less ambitious than his predecessor of a a decade ago. And it is only natural where Legislation insists upon the good work-1 man and the bad being equally re- j

warded. The whole system makes inevitably ior the lowering of the standard cf individual efficiency, wheieas under keen competition the individual is impelled to excel in whatever calling may be his, to cultivate his industry and skill, and oftentimes develop inventive genius. And with all the legislative enactments to compel improvement of the worker’s conditions in New Zealand, is it improved,? The market for his services is becoming daily more restricted. New lines ot enterprise aie not springing up, for capital is not offering where it is challenged as an arch-enemy. The constant harassing of established enterprises reduces their capacity for payments out even at the demand of labour. And there are always these immutable laws of supply and demand, not to be abrogated even by Act of the New Zealand Parliament. Hence, one cannot be surprised to ■find that in “Labour’s Paradise” the demand for workers is not by any means an active one, and wages on the whole are infinitely lower than in Canada or the United States, with practically the same cost of living. If one may judge, therefore, the position of labour in New Zealand by the commercial or monetary standards of Canada or the United States the labour legislation of the New Dominion must be classed a colossal blunder from the standpoint of the worker as well as those of the employer and the State. In its working out the New Zealand principle of disregarding aught but the time employed by labour must unfit the skilled worker for holding his own should he be brought into competition upon the basis of quality of service- It makes for deterioration in efficiency, and the fact cannot be fairly denied or successfully controverted.