Untitled

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9055, 14 February 1908, Page 4

In a political address at Dannevirke on Wednesday evening the Minister for Education advocated better payment of country teachers, and a properly classified system of promotion. When a Minister openly advocates a reform in a departmental matter within his control it is reasonable to expect him to give effect to his ideas, especially when he does not point out any insuperable difficulty. We may therefore assume Mr Fowlds has a scheme up his sleeve for improving the condition of country teachers, and that he will exhibit it in the shape of a bill next session. It is somewhat strange, however, that Mr Fowlds has only arrived at the conclusion that country teachers are underpaid, seeing that for some years past the Press generally and country members of Parliament have been dinning the fact into the ears of the Government. It is also remarkable how many suggestions of wrongs to ( be rectified by Parliament are prevalent this year, though the wrongs have been patent for a very long time without having had any stimulating effect upon the authorities.

From every quarter of the dominion the cry of scarcity of labour is still heard. A registry office-keeper in the

South Island has just been giving his experiences to a Press representative. He states that he wanted 31 milkers at prices ranging from 15s to 30s weekly, and could not get them for love or money. He also wanted 30 farm hands, and ploughmen at 30s a week, but saw no chance of getting them. Labouring men, he says, refuse to go out of town, and for these more work is offering than can be disposed of. This labour agent declares that he advertised for labourers for the town for three consecutive days, offering 9s per day, and did not get a single response. As for domestic servants, he ! absolutely refused to take applications from housekeepers because he could not supply their demands. Domestic servants are, he states, not to be had at from 10s to £1 per week. Factories were seeking girls at from 10s to £1 per week. The persistent demand for labour in many departments of industry in the dominion demonstrates the necessity for encouraging a steady influx of immigrants of the right sort.

If the Minister for Agriculture has his way, the dignity of one section of labour is to be placed beyond cavil. Referring on Wednesday at Hawera to the great expansion of the dairy industry, Mr McNab told his hearers that the proposed dairy school would virtually be a university divided into two department", namely, for scientific research and for instructional purposes. This, he said, would raise the dairy farmers' occupation to a profession in tha highest sense of the term. The Minister is of opinion that the time has come when New Zealand must cease copying, and find by scientific research that which is adaptable to our own. conditions. Meanwhile the battle of the sites for the projected "dairy university" is proceeding, and the Minister for Agriculture is having a good time in baffling the residents of the various localities who want to know exactly where the new institution, is to be established.