The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1889. WHAT WILL DO WITH OUR BOYS ?

Temuka Leader, Issue 1861, 5 March 1889, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1889. WHAT WILL DO WITH OUR BOYS ?

Ik a recent article the Christchurch Telegraph deplored the fact that the number of teachers was increasing at a tremendous rate, and said that very soon the competition would reduce the salaries in that deportment of labor. It also urged upon the rising generation instead of adopting teaching as a profession to go out into the country and settle on the land, and went on moralising on the fatuity of preferring genteel labor to the independence of country life. This is an old and thread-bare argument with which self-sufficient ignorance has always been able to settle all social questions. It is advanced as a cure for the sweating system ; for the unemployed, and for every conceivable social irregularity, but the rascals who arrange matters in this flippant, easy way always neglect to say where the land on which they can settle is, and how they are to settle on it. Let us, for instance, take the case of schoolmasters, as it was the increase in the number of that class that introduced the subject for discussion, and just see whether it is possible for them to settle on the land in that offhand way suggested by our contemporary, First of all, let us remember that it takes capital—and a good deal of it—to settle on the land, and we want to know how many of those who adopt teaching as a profession are thus equipped for rural pursuits? Not one in a hundred; in fact, we have not in any instance met with a teacher whose parents were able to supply him with sufficient money to settle him on land. That, therefore, disposes of the question completely. It is a matter of utter impossibility for almost all those who become schoolmasters to settle on the land, because they have not the means of doing so. There remains still another way open to them will doubtless he urged. They can go into the country and earn sufficient to enable them to buy the land. Can they ? This is a brilliant idea which a little reflection will prove to be utter nonsense. What is the state of the labor market in the conn try at present ? Is it not crowded and are not hundreds of men idle ? Then why should a youth treat with contempt the prospects which the teaching profession holds out to him for such a precarious, unprofitable, and unpleasant occupation as agricultural labor ? As a teacher it is possible for him to make a comfortable home; as an agricultural or general laborer he sees nothing before him but hard work and poor pay, with a blue blanket or two, in which he carries on his hack all his colonial possessions. The fact is, there is nothing to do in the country districts. The roads and bridges are made, the fences are all erected, and it is only in the harvest and shearing seasons that men can expect to find remunerative employment. As a general rule fence-cutting, ploughing, stocking, and so on, arc let by tender, and so keen is the competition between workmen, owing to the glutted condition of the labor market, that the price at which work is often done is worse than the sweating system. We have known men who have not been able to earn more than 2s per day at contracts which they have had, and others who have made only 2s 6d per day, and so on. The overseer of a local body recently estimated that a job of wort which he had to do would cost £6 or £7, but he found when tenders for it were opened there was a man ready to do it for £l 10s. Thus in reality there is a great deal of the sweating system in existence even in the country districts, as well as in the towns, so that any youth may well be pardoned if such vocations have no allurement for him.

In making this statement we have only one object in view: we want fathers and mothers to think over this subject, and ask themselves, “ What are our children to do|?” Letthemlook at the number of children attending our schools, and ask themselves, “What will all these do in a few years? And where will they get employment ? Is there a father or mother who has not reflected on this? If such there be, we can only pity them, and pity the children dependent on them! It is a question of the greatest importance, and the parent to whom it causes no anxiety must care little for his children. Here we are now, with every field of labor over-supplied, and our birth-rate double—in fact, treble—our death-rate. For every laborer at present in the market in a few years there will be three laborers. What is to be done with them ? And where will they find employment? The fact is, that unless great changes are made they will not find it, and and half of them must look oh, and be supported out of charity, while the other half is working. Machinery is doing everything, and every day brings out some new improvement in labor-saving machinery. A short time ago we were told by a Christchurch manufacturer that very recently a machine had been patented which would save him the work of 20 hands. He intends to get that machine, and five or six rival manufacturers must get it also to he equal with him, and thus about 100 hands will be thrown out of employment in Christchurch alone by that one machine. Let

anyone notice the extraordinary improvements which a few years have effected in agricultural machinery and what is the result ? That the harvest season does not give one quarter the work to the laboring man it did some few years ago. Men did not notice this while they had plenty of work in making railways, roads, bridges, and fences, but now, when all these are finished, what are they to do? Nothing! There is not in reality constant employment for half the number of men in the country already, and certainly things cannot get better for them until they are a great deal worse. It does not matter whether one turns to the legal, the medical, or the teaching professions—it is all the same—they are all as overcrowded as the day-laborer’s profession, and in all there are many deserving men out of employment. It, therefore, becomes a hard matter for a youth to choose a means of earning a livelihood between them. This is a very serious matter, and parents of children ought to think over it, and begin at once the reforms necessary to widen the field of labor. We have not in this article space to deal with this question fully, and must confine ourselves to a few words more, The land must be broken up into smaller holdings; the goods which we import must be manufactured at home, and the hours of labor must be shortened. These reforms alone can set matters right, and the sooner we undertake them the better.