The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1881.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 873, 14 September 1881, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1881.

There has been a considerable demand latterly in this district for bush hands, and we are sorry to say that the supply has fallen short, Bush work requires bone and muscle, and apparently after all the outcry there has been of want of work, there is not enough bone and muscle in the colony for its requirements, during even the dull season of the year, The question naturally arises, how shall we be off for laborers in the busy season if during the slack one they are not forthcoming ? Farmers will.do well to prepare themselves for a scarcity of hands during next harvest, It is very evident that good labour is obtainable now only to a very limited extent, and that in a few months wages will be high and men hard to obtain. In the meantime improvements are in many instances arrested by a deficiency of bands. If six or seven years ago, when shiploads of immigrants began to pour into the colony, every man brought to New Zealand had been a bona fide agricultural laborer, the present difficulty which is experienced in carrying out improvements would have been averted, It is, however, wonderful,

considering the heterogeneous mass of immigrants who landed here—and it says a good deal for New Zealand—that the colony should have absorbed them one and all—utilising many who at first were considered useless to it, One result, however, has followed which is to be regretted, viz., that the town populations of the colony has been increased by immigration more than the country districts have been, and we now find ourselves with a surplus city population and a deficient rural one, Time will, of course, adjust inequalities of this kind, but the present needs of the country districts, if they are not supplied from centres of population, will necessitate introducing larger numbers of agricultural laborers than are now coming into the colony. Country settlers have now the capital at their disposal in many instances for effecting improvements on their estates, and it will be a serious drawback to the colony if the state of the labor market suspends the operation of clearing and cultivating land,