A VISITOR’S JUDGMENT.
THE COUNTRY IN LABOUR'S GRIP.
WHAT IT COSTS TO LIVE
“It is a fine country, this New Zealand, but the labour question is going to get it down.” This is the appreciation and condemnation of an English manufacturer, Mr Richard Pybus, F.R.G.S., who has been travelling through New Zealand and Australia investigating questions of labour and the cost of living. Mr Pybus said the prospects tor business men proposing to start new factories here were “absolutely rotten” —because of labour. The arbitration system was all in favour of the worker. If the decisions did not suit him he did not accept them. And all the time he was asking for more. “I believe that if a working man got 5s an hour one year he would go to the court for 5s 6d the next.”
But, though Mr Pybus gave such a hearty condemnation of the country from the viewpoint of the manufacturer, he bad a very different judgment to give when considering the prospects of a working immigrant. “The conditions are far better here than in the Old Country for a young man who is able to come over,” he said. “The style of living in New Zealand is far superior to that in England. I met a man recently who was getting £2 10s a week, and he wanted to make out that he was worse off here on that wage that he would be in England on £1 Bs. But the conditions are very different. The man in the colonies wants his holidays and his short hours. He wants to dress well and to have his family well dressed. The conclusion I have come to from statistics I have collected and information I have obtained from various people is t hat the cost of living here is not more than 25 per cent, greater than in England. Then the people live here —they are not content to merely exist and they look splendid, instead of being bedraggled like many workpeople in England. They'get 30 per cent, more comfort as a result of their labour.”
Mr Pybus intends visiting the Argentine, Brazil and Chili before returning to England.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MH19120201.2.24
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1001, 1 February 1912, Page 4
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363A VISITOR’S JUDGMENT. Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1001, 1 February 1912, Page 4
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