PLENTY OF ROOM FOR LABOUR.

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 192, 7 April 1893, Page 3

PLENTY OF ROOM FOR LABOUR.

Some persons have an idea that the growth of population in the world is fast bringing us to a time when the struggle for existence amoDgst those who “ earn their bread by the sweat of their brow” will become so keen as to be unbearable. And these persons consider that the only way to avoid the coming pinch is by thinning out the workers either by preventing their entry into the world, or by finding them a speedy exit from it. It is true that the cry of workers in many lands is assuming a fiercer tone of late years, but this has not been brought about altogether by an increase in the number of workers. Capital has had a deal to do with the tightening of the field of labour and if the competition between labourers is becoming keen, it is also true that the stand of labour against capital is becoming stronger. Those who desire te work are growing wiser every day ; they see many opportunities for labour closed to them simply because they are possessed by men of capital who will not work them themselves, but prefer to grow rich on the work of others. The competition of labour will probably grow keener hut labour knows that there is plenty of scope in the world for her and as she is pushed by competition she will demand from speculators that idle lands shall be put to good use. An American journal points out that “if the entire State of Texas were planted with corn and the hills were two feet apart and the rows were three feet apart, and if every man woman and child in the State of Connecticut were set to work in the field to h®e the corn, japd each person were able to and did bee

two hills in five minutes, it would take this army of laborers seven years, 230 days and seven hours to hoe every hill of corn in the State, labouring continuously night and day 305 days each year. _ i To those persons who have never stopped to consider how great a world they are living in these figures may be of interest. The man who fears that he could not elbow his way about in the crowded West without chafing the nap of his coat sleeves may gathei some solace from the statement that the entire living population of the globe, 1,400,000,000 souls, divided into families of five persons each, could be located in Texas, each family with a house on a half-acre lot, and there would still remain 50,000 vacant family lots.”