LABOR AND LUXURY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1699, 16 February 1888, Page 4

LABOR AND LUXURY.

Thatllocality and circumstance alone are true magicians in respect to their effects on the value of human labor is well known. In a manual by the late Mr Alexander Wyllie, entitled “ Labor, Luxury, and Leisure,” it is said that on the vast farms of Dakota the equivalent of one man’s labor, supposing the crop amount to 20 bushels to the acre, is 5,500 bushels of wheat. Now, keeping back enough for seed, we have here sufficient to produce 1000 barrels of flour. This mass of food stuff can be carried through the flour mill and put into barrels, including the labor of making the latter, at the equivalent of one other man’s labor for a year. Again, it has been worked out that at the ratio of the work accomplished by each man on the New York Central Railroad the wheat can be transported to the flour mill, and the road be kept in full “going order,” for an equivalent to the whole labor of two or more men. It comes, then, to this: That 1000 barrels of flour, the annual ration of 1000 persons, can be placed in New York from a point 2000 miles away with the exertions of only four men in producing, milling, and transporting the wheat. Further, this staple food can he baked and distributed by the endeavors of three more persons. It follows then that just seven persons can supply 1000 with the staff of life.