The Daily News. THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 1911. LACK OF LABOR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 16, 13 July 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 1911. LACK OF LABOR.

From Australia there come repeated "wails" (the word used by the cable j man) that all sorts of employers can-j not get labor. We are familiar in New ! Zealand with the same kind of "wail." It is -very natural that' manufacturers' should 1 dislike the situation. The shortage of labor usually is confined to those occupations that require no special talent j and no special training. Although this J suggests that the activities of manufacture are in excess of the needs of the .colonies, it certainly indicates the mere mechanical pursuits requiring no special 'knowledge are less popular than formerly. In older countries it is not uncommon to find that many succeeding generations are content to' undertake the *di<ties of their forefathers. There is jth)is a lack of spirit, individuality and enterprise. Although we may admire the person who has been a footman to one Jnaster for for.ty years and is the son of a footman who was the son and grandson and great-grandson of a foot;man, we should admire him much more jf lie shed his skin and became Lord Chancellor # or Prime Minister. It is natural in new countries for young people to desire to be "a little better" than their parents, and so the excellent laboring man does not want his son to become an excellent laborer. In fact, he w.o'uld much rather he became an indifferent clerk, a minor professional man, or at least belong to some human branch that "didn't take its coat off." Everybody knows how hard it is to find boys (or girls) to fill minor positions. Their parents are probably trying hard to find gorgeous openings that will lead to K.C.-ships, or M.D.-ships, or crack ac-countancy-ships. At the same time, there is no crowding a.t the top of any profession. The fact that one hundred and seventy-five boys whose fathers were carters have gained "positions" in merchants' offices doesn't worry the Carnegies or the Liptons one bit. And th« fact that seven hundred and eight-four youngsters have become law clerks, although their fathers were agricultural laborers, doesn't disturb the equanimity of Rufus Isaacs or Lloyd-George, Asquith or Skerrett in the slightest. If there is an indisposition on the part of colonials to undertake menial tasks, don't blame the colonials. Humanity in the course of generations succeeds to higher grades. Some of tlie descendants of the folk who came over with the Conqueror conversely are wheeling fish-barrows, or are otherwise usefully if humbly employed. There is, one might believe, no desperate occasion for a manufacturer to "wail" at the lack of labor when he has built a new wing to his factory and cannot get men to work in it. The inevitable law of supply and demand makes it humanly impossible for the world to have too few "hewers of wood and drawers of water." Thousands of years ago there was a civilisation completer in many details than we have to-day. but we still have the man in his shirt-sleeves, and always shall have. We shall have misfits, too, all the time. There are navvies who should be doctors, and accountants who might have been engineers, and lawyers who would make good parsons, and union agitators who should be leader writers. If a few of the lower stratum get pushed up into the higher by the inevitable evolution of all things, be comforted. The lower stratum will be again supplied. In the meantime, of course, everybody weeps that the manufacturers' incomes are less than the manufacturers think they ought to be. and blames boys who are budding Asquiths or Tafts or Kitcheners or Fildes for daring to have an ambition to climb when they might spend their lives pasting labels on jam tins. The shortage of skilled labor reported from Australia is another matter, and suggests that sv lot of the "eaters" may be leaving cities to become "producers" in the great back country. If this is so, the situation is not very serious. '', j-ji ■ [ "fl