FARM LABOUR.

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1334, 18 January 1881, Page 3

FARM LABOUR.

One of the greatest obstacles in the way of successful f tirtniug in the colonies is the difficulty of obtaining efficient labour. Of the large number of "unemployed" of ■whom so much has been heard, only a small proportion are men possessing any skill in farm work. It is usual to class farm hands as unskilled labourers, but so far from this being correct, there is really but little work on a farm which, to be done properly, does not require a good deal of intelligence and much practice. With the eontinually-increiising application of machinery to the cultivation of the land, farm work is rising fast in the scale of skilled labour, and the chances of employment for the uninformed and unintelligent labourer undergo a proportionate diminution. To properly handle any sort of tool requires some use, but there ia a wide difference in the degree of intelligence involved in the handling of a scythe and in the management of a reaping and binding: machine. With improved appliances we increase the productiveness of labour, but that labour requires to be of a higher order, and therefore becomes all the more difficult to obtain. Scarcity of labour is a serious misfortuno to farmers at busy times of the year, especially when, as it always does in this country, it implies a preposterously high rate of wages, though farmers suffer more from the inefficiency of their employes than [jfrom scarcity of hands ana high wages put together. Last harvest, for instance, we wonder how many bushels of grain were rendered unmarketable on account of the carelessness and stupidity of the men employed in stacking. Many farmers lost more in this way than would have paid their harvest expenses.

The Nation, in referring to the prosecutions, naively remarks that the Lea- " "guers have merely advised the people to - . pay rent "if they thought they could ■ spare it," and it asks "2 there is any ' ■ breach of law or morality in that f" It denounces Mr. Foreter as "the falsest friend " that Ireland has erer had.