THE LABOUR QUESTION IN AMERICA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2578, 19 January 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE LABOUR QUESTION IN AMERICA.

The American comapondentof the Otago Daily Times writes : —Chinese immigration having been discontinued the labor queetiou is coming to the fore again. A cry in favour of " cheap labour" is being raised already. The truth is agricultural development in fruit and vines has run far in advance of the effectiveness of resident labour. The demand for labour is pressing in the planting, pruning, and gathering seasons for fruit, nuts, and grapes, and at seeding and harvesting for wheat, barley, &c. During five months of the year there is great pressure for labour, the bulk of which drifts into the large towns the remainder of the year. White labour becomes demoralised under these conditions ; Chinese labour does not. Chinamen can earn a living at varied pursuits much more readily than white labourers. They can live for less money, and in various ways have an advantage over their white competitors. Hence they are preferred as a stantl-by throughout the State, but public policy having pronounced against Chinese immigration, the producers of this coast adapt their industries to the altered conditions. If there were cheap railroad transposition, immigrant trains from the East would soon supply the deficiency, but that is the trouble. The railroads will not run cheap immigrant trains. In the great Eastern cities, and in the manufacturing cities of the Ohio basin, female labour is worse paid than in England, while the condition of labour in the mining regions of Pennsylvania and Ohio is infinitely worse than in Scotland and Wales. There is abundance of cheap labour in this country if it could be distributed. On this question of labour it may be proper to say a word, especially ae there appears to be a tendency to abandon the colonies to come to this country. This is a mistake. All things considered, labour is as well off, even in dull times, in the colonies as it is here in average times. If the pay for day labour say loOdol, or 6s per day is higher than the lowest range of colonial wages, the hours are longer. In the harvest field 3dol per day are paid, but the men work from sunrise to sunset, with short intermissions for food, and sleep in their blankets on the ground. In the highest paid industries unskilled labour receives 2dol per day of 10 honrs, but the work is very arduous. Men are " driven" in a way that is unknown in the colonies, and the cost of livitig is higher. With all your drawbacks, New Zealand is the paradise of working men, and I think Australia should be bracketed with it judging from the recent achievements of the labour associations at Sydney and elsewhere. Working men have the care of a paternal government iu the colonies : here, every man must take care of himself. There are no public works orginated for the benefit of the unemployed. If thej cannot find work they become trampsand vagrants, and are dealt with accordingly. The tramps lately outnumber the militia iu nearly every state of the Union, and men are constantly dropping ont of the ranks of the effective army of workers into the noneffective army of bummors through no apparent fault of their own. Government work, bridging o>'er hard times, saves the colonial working men from this degradation, and this advantage should neither be lightly esteemed nor abused. At all events, the balance of advantage bein? so clearly in favour of unskilled labour in the colony, as compared with the coast which is the most prosperous sectiou of

the country, it follows that men who have to earn a living by daily toil should remain where they are best off. Through, out America, in every vocation of life men work longer hours, do more effective

work, and are paid very little more money as a rule than in the colonies Every man is thrown upon his own resources in the United States, and the weak are invariably driven to the wall.