The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1882.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 993, 7 February 1882, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1882.

Ocm local contemporary says that if one encouragment were held out to artizans w should not have them leaving tlw country for adjacent colonies in shiploads, and argues that in New bouth Wales as well as in Victoria, local Industrie!! arc fostered by the Governments of those countries. Our cont(.mj,orary if, altogether in favoi' of i protection tariff for New Zealand manufactures, recognising the advantages which other communities have obtained by this artificial aid. While we would readily admit that a protection tains a good tiling for Melbourne and Sydney we cannot allow that it is beneficial for New Zealand. In Victorn one fourth of the adult male popumtion is employed in factories.: ..In that.colony there are more mechanics" and artizans than there are occupiers of land or agricultural laborers,'" More than one half of its population is"'concentrated in towns which are devoted ■to manufactures and mining interests. Do we want this state of things reproduced in New Zealand] Let us take the Waitarapa district as an example. In this district we have probably two thousand male adults, Would it answer our purpose for five hundred of- them to be shut up in factories instead of being engaged in felling arid/clearing bush, in fencing, and sowing, and reaping, Are not the five hundred strong men better empbyed spread broadcast over the country] are they not happier and healthier than they ■ftould be if cribbed, cabined, and confined in workshops 1 ( Or put it another way, supposing we increase our male population by a few hundred additional hands. Is there not room for them on the stations and farms and if they have any means of their own are there not thousands of small farm allotments within the borders of the county waiting to be occupiedHf additional popnlatiohbebrought into the district it is better for it and better for us that it should be'settled on the land. She settlement of the land, not the encouragement of local industries, is the trump card for New Zealand, The circumstances of this colony, its soil, and its climate, are different from those of Victoria and New South Wales. The latter colonies may have found it necessary to go to a large expense, or to make great sacrifices to establish local manufactures, but Now Zealand is worthy of a better fate than this. Wo have not been spending millions upon millions in the opening up of the interior of the North and Middle Islands to encourage the manufacture of scented soap or the local production of frying pans. There is a limit to the capital available for investment in New Zealand, and we should be sorry to see any large proportion of it drawn away from the land for the establishment of manufactories. Let each country fulfil its proper mission, We do not envy Victoria its pre-eminence as a. manufacturing and mining community, but let New Zealand be the home of hundreds of thousands of honest yeoman, tilling their own farms and grazing their own stock. In this direction Victoria cannot compete with us. We should not bear so much about encouraging industries and protective tariffs here were it not that during the Vogelian era a large number of men were sent out to this colony who were altogether unfitted for physical outdoor labor, and who can never become colonists in the true sense of the word. From men like these the demand for manufactories springs, and for their sake it may he necessary to make some concessions. It will, however, be a grave blunder to expend too large a proportion of the resources of the colony in developing what is after all but an inferior interest.