692 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



powers of the workers to keep out of debt, without hope or 

 possibiHty of saving either for sickness, for times of no work, 

 or for old age. 



This aspect of the question must be kept steadily in view. 

 Our social conditions, by which I include our methods of 

 employing labour, are such that no sooner has an employer of 

 labour taken the best he can out of an employe than the latter 

 is sent away to seek employment elsewhere. Those are the 

 best servants who can produce the greatest profits for their 

 employers, and so soon as profits diminish the workers suffer, 

 because capital must be sustained at all costs. What I 

 specially wish to bring out to view here is this : that, you may 

 do whatever you please in the way of government, you cannot 

 take advantages from one class and give them to another 

 unless at the same time you make the class from whom the 

 advantages are drawn more dependent upon others. It is the 

 same in everything. You cannot destroy force or matter, 

 neither can you destroy equity or justice. You may disturb 

 the equilibrium by creating advantages, but these advantages 

 carry with them responsibilities and after-effects which finally 

 bring about a balance of conditions. 



We have seen the average wage paid to those forms of 

 labour where employment may be said to be constant, but 

 there exists a large class in the colony who have no regular 

 employment, and who depend for employment upon sheep- 

 shearing, fencing, and the other hundred kinds of needs that 

 spring up in a new country. No average wage can be obtained 

 for this class of workers. Such labour may be well paid, but 

 it is irregular, and I think that two hundred days a year may 

 be set down as the extreme limit of employment during a year 

 in which such men are engaged. 



You have only to visit the Old Men's Kefuge in the town 

 to discover the source from whence the greatest troubles 

 spring. Nor can anything else be expected under the present 

 social conditions. Inquire from the old men as to their 

 pleasures, their enjoyments, and their wanderings, and it will 

 be found that when not employed they had to travel from 

 township to township and from station to station, and the 

 only place for shelter was the bar-rooni of the hotel, or a 

 friendlv wind-beaten whare by the wavside. No wonder such 

 men break down under trials of mind and body to which most 

 of them are exposed ; and, whatever may be said of their fail- 

 ings, one is surprised why so few of them give up in despair, 

 considering the black and prospectless lives through which 

 most of them pass. Can such a class of men be expected to 

 provide for a rainy day in the same way as the professional 

 classes and those of the artisan class whose labour is regular ? 

 If not, what ought to be done, not merely to train them in 



