HARD TIMES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 72, 23 March 1872, Page 2

HARD TIMES.

We take the following from a Californian paper, and would beg of our readers to consider whether these remarks, slightly modified, would not equally well apply to New Zealand :—- --"We are fast becoming a nation of schemers to live without genuine work. Our boys are not learning trades, our farmers' sons are crowding into cities, looking for clerkships and post-offices : hardly one American girl in each hundred will do housework for wages, ; however urgent her need ; ; so we are sending to Europe for workmen and i buying of her artisans millions worth of products that we ought to make for ourselves. Though our crop of rascals is heavy, we do not

grow our own hemp; though we are overrun with lads who deserve flagellation, we import our willows. Our women (unless deceived) shine in European fabrics ; our men dress in foreign clothes ; the toys which amuse our younger children have generally reached us over the sea. We are like the farmer who hires his neighbor's sous to cut his wood, feed his stock, and run his errands, while his own boys lounge at the grog-shop, playing billiards, and then wonders why, in spite of his best efforts, he sinks annually deeper and deeper into debt, till tbe sheriff clears him out, aud he starts West to begin again. We must turn over a new leaf. Our boys and girls must be taught to lovo labor by qualifying themselves to do it efficiently. We must turn out fewer professionals and more skilled artisans, as well as foodgrowers. We must grow and fabricate two hundred millions worth per annum that we now import, and so reduce the foreign debt that we have so long and so successfully augmented year by year. We must qualify our clever boys to erect and run factories, furnaces, rolling-mills, tanneries, machine shops, &c; to open and work mines, improve and fashion implements, and double the present product of their father's farm. So We shall stem the tide of debt tbat sets steadily against our shores, and cease to be visited and annoyed by hard times."