South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2341, 17 September 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1880.

We suggested the other day that heavy taxation, political mismanagement and hard times were driving the cream of the working population out of the colony. This is confirmed by the fact that vessels leaving New Zealand for the Australian colonies are absolutely crowded with steerage passengers. We are told that the steamer Hern, which is on the point of leaving Wellington for Sydney, takes about 150 steerage passengers, principally tradesmen who have been unable to obtain employment in the colony. Even the highly favored district of Taranaki is unable to prevent its bone and sinew from taking wing. At the opening of the Waitotara railway line yesterday, the workmen employed on the contract presented their employer with a clock, barometer, and Held glass prior to their departure for New South Wales. Tins exodus of working men from the colony is a far more serious matter than Major Atkinson’s financial skeletons or the native difficult}’. It signifies a loss (o New Zealand that is irreparable. Worse than that onr loss will bo a certain gain to the other colonics. Jf the exodus is allowed to continue, the millions of money spent on free immigration will be as much lost to New Zealand as if it were buried at the bottom of the Atlantic. Ollier colonics with fewer taxes and more manufactures, will gladly receive the principal, leaving us to pay the interest. This comes of a system of of free immigration, which kidnaps the unwary instead of attracting the eligible. The Vogcliau system of immigration lias always been popular wilk stock, growers and land-dealers who desire to get rid of their properties on advantageous terms, and to raise the price of beef and mutton by the introduction of consumers. Hut they forget that the habits of (he intellectual animal arc very distinct from those of the graminivorous quadruped. Colonists have only to be rendered discontented., and like spring swallows they speedily develop migratory dispositions. The working men of New Zealand arc thoroughly discontented. Their wages have been lowered on the one hand and the cost of living has becu terribly increased on the other, till they arc ripe for a change of climate. The men who wept bitter tears of spite over a slight concession in favor of their tea and sugar have added tax upon tax to their comforts and necessities from the tobacco in their pipes to the shirts on their backs, and now in the language of the auctioneer they are “ going ! going ! gone!” What renders this sudden change of the human stream from immigration to emigration particularly serious is the circumstance that the men who arc leaving the colony for other regions arc the very pick of the population. They arc generally models of the kind of machinery that is wanted to develop the resources of a new country, and build a colony together. They arc men with strong healthy frames and willing bands neither afraid or ashamed of any ordinary kind of work. They have pluck and discernment sufficient to perceive that to bo successful in life they must seek the best market for their labor. Thu fact that they arc able to take their departure from the colony is a proof in itself of saving, thrifty habits, and besides the loss of the pith of our population, we may calculate on a loss of capital by no means inconsiderable. This stream of emigration while it fattens our Australian neighbors will leave New Zealand sadly impoverished. We have it on good authority that many of the employees on our. public railways, disheartened at their recent treatment arc saving up with the view of leaving the colony at an early date. On every hand there arc signs of an exodus that will probably be disastrous if not ruinous.

It is no use hopcing against hope—to go on conjuring up bright prospects, and at the same time driving them away. We have tried the forcing system witli immigration and public works, and what is the result? The best of the population leaving our shores never to return, and public works falling into ruins for want of money to maintain them, is not a cheerful picture. We have perpetrated the folly of introducing machinery before our workshops wore built and leaving the material to rust. The colony is surfeited with laborers for whose labor there is no outlet. If New Zealand is to recover her lost ground this career of folly must be stopped. The nonsense about unparalleled resources and the fortunes available for sturdy pioneers by converting the wilderness into a garden, must cease. Airy visions must be made to give way to practical reforms. We must have less talk and more real work —less legislation and fewer taxes. The Chinese have a method of dwarfing the statlicst trees and shrubs. The rulers of New Zealand have discovered an equally ingenious method of dwarfing enterprise. Instead of givinglabor free play by encouraging the growth of workshops, we have crushed out the very spirit from artisans and

manufacturers by an oppressive load of taxation. In Victoria railway locomotives arc manufactured by piivate dims to the order of the Government. In this colony the simplest piece of machinery or rolling stock has to be obtained from Great Britain. Even local bodies arc found copying the example of the Government. If the Timaru Harbor Board require an anchor, a cable, or a scoop dredge, they superciliously ignore the colonial manufacturer, and without even inviting tenders, despatch their orders through the inevitable Mortgage Agency to Great Britain. It is tins leaning on foreign workshops when we should be depending on ourselves—this ignoring of colonial enterprise—that discourages the manufacturer and drives the artisan out of the colony. The colony is bleeding at every pore. Every departing steamer is draining her life blood away. If the How is to be staunched, the heartless policy that has for years past been pursued towards skilled labor must be altered. The workshop as well as the paddock must be represented in Parliament. A colony of squatters and farmers is a mistake. Such a colony can ncitheir prosper nor long exist. The natural balance between producer and manufacturer must be preserved or the social and political fabric will suffer. Taxation must be so adjusted that it will encourage industry instead of driving it away. Under Major Atkinson New Zealand is receding more rapidly than she prospered under the visionary yet enterprising schemes of Sir Julius Vogel. What we require at present is a man at the helm who is neither an enthusiast nor a panicstricken scaramouch, but something between the fearful Major and the fearless Agent-General, a Colonial Treasurer who can look well ahead, and who possesses sufficient firmness to place taxation on the proper shoulders, send monopolies to the right-about, and • encourage native industry, not by pouring men into the country, but by improving the condition of those who are here already.