HARD TIMES AND WHAT CAUSES THEM.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 217, 28 March 1872, Page 7

HAR D TIME S AN D WHAT CAUSES THEM.

Similarly circumstanced, as being in anew country, with people of like origin and tendencies, Austoalian colonists are left-to judge how much of the following remarks, from a Californian journal, apply to our position in the present day : — "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 aud post-offices ; hardly oue .American gi "1 out of a hundred will do housework for wages, however urgent her need ; so we are sending to Europe for workmen and buying of her artisans millions worth of products that we ought to make ourselves. Though our crop of pascals is heavy, we do not grow our 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 havegenerally reached us over the sea. We are li'ie the farmer who hires his neighbour's sons 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, until the sheriff clears him out, and he starts West to begin again. We must turn over a new leaf. Our boys and girls must be taught to love labour by qualifying themselves to do it efficiently. We must turn_ out fewer professionals and more skilled artisans, as well as food-growers. 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 shall we stem the tide of debt that sets steadily against our shores, and cease to be visited and annoyed by hard times."