The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1888. Agriculture v. Manufactures.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2977, 15 August 1888, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1888. Agriculture v. Manufactures.

Dr Campbell, tho chairman of tho New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Association, in the course of his remarks at the late annual meeting said, " Wo must have a greatly increased agricultural population or we most assuredly will retrograde. Thore is now a great cry gone forth of protection to native industries. Verily we are almost asked to believe that the establishment of a score or two factories is going to bring about such a great wave of prosperity that depression and hard times shall know us no more. No greater delusion than this can exist. Manufactures! What aro these compared to agriculture? A mere drop in the bucket, as the following figures will prove. Those I have taken are not of a very recent date, hut that does not affect their application in the caso in point. I am aware there has been a great shrinkage in the value of agricultural produce, but that will be found to bo relative only in proportion to a like falling off in the value of manufactures, Here is how the case stands upon instituting the comparison. I quote from a London journal: 'The' annual valtio of the agricultural produce of tho United Kingdom is about £800,000,000. This is double the produce of her looms, three times tho produce of her forges, and four or live times a year's produce of Lor mines.' ' We were not awaro that tk annual value of tho produce of tho United Kingdom amounted to such an onor. inous snip, but'without, this argument in favor o£ pastoral and agricultural pursuits we cordially sympathise with tho views expressed by ])r Campbell. Even in vaunted Victoria, where manufacturing industries havo been forced lido mushrooms, they are hopolessly beaten by other sourcos of national wealth. In that great Colony Pastoral produce takes first rank, Agricultural produce comes second, while manufactures only come third. Our own hope is that New Zealand will be spared for many % long day any more forced marches in tup direction of stimulating manufactures. We have seen manufacturing populations in largo towns of England, we have, watched them flitting by in tho street,' pale, grimy, and careworn, tho degenerate Englishman who has become part of a machine, who passes a succession of sweet springs, wpm summors, glorious autumns, and kindly winters in sweltering workshops where ono day is as another, One man porhaps will turn a handle from boyhood to the grave, a mere automaton with a single everlasting motion, another perhaps works a file on one particular article till ho is greyheaded, a girl grows into womanhood blacking endless relays of fenders for ten hours a day, aud another girl perhaps in.a horrible atmosphere devotes ■ year after year to

tho monotonous task of varnishing a never-ending series ofbras3 door knobs. We respect manual labor when the brain and hand can work togotbor as they usually do in the healthy outdoor occupations of this Colony. Even in such of our workshops which aro absolutely necessary as aids to our pastoral and agricultural pursuits, theso is a wider range of occupation than is to be observed in the Old Country, and the worker is an artificer rather than.an adjunct to a machine. Our manufactures will keep pace in proportion to our needs without the aid of stimulants. The problem which lies before our legislators is whether the vast solitudes of New Zealand, tho millions of acres as yet untrodden by human foot, should bo converted into prosperous homesteads, or whether it would be better to take the men who may people these homesteads, and give each one of them tho run of six or seven feet of a stifling workshop, rather than the glorious freedom of forty or fifty acres of land.