52 



% 



"With this record of handsome services, it is really 

 incomprehensible that no efforts should be made to ex- 

 tend elevators, for there is no reason why this economy 

 in handling our grain should be reserved for the ports 

 alone. If elevators have proved of inestimable service in 

 the last stages of the grain in shipping away our surplus 

 production, there is every cause to suppose that at least 

 like services, might be rendered in moving our crop, from 

 the first stage of its production. 



LABOUR SAVING DEVICES AND STRIKES. 



, 



This country must learn to handle grain 03; machin- 

 ery instead of manual labour, just as it is transported by 

 machinery in place of on the backs of animals, or man- 

 kind; the elevator means 'nothing less than a gradual 

 substitution of machinery for manual labour, and the 

 history of such substitution during the past century has 

 made this replacing of manual labour a recognised ne- 

 cessity among enlightened people. 



The. ever increasing cost of manual labour, the in- 

 ability of the folk of the present epoch to exist on the 

 Mnall remuneration which manual labour is accorded, 

 the endless repetition of strikes, and the general un- 

 rest among workers because of the insignificance of their 

 earnings, compared with the^cost of their sustenance, 

 will oblige the adoption of all mechanical means or labour 

 saving devices. In no part of the country has the un- 

 rest been more manifest than among manual' labourers, 

 for whom there can be no question of adequate remun- 

 ation for the labour, without unduly increasing the cost 

 of production and so, in the fields of trade rivalry, re- 

 ducing the possibilities of successful competition from 

 this country. 



Practically without exception, throughout the whole 

 Republic, the use of labour saving devices is common to 

 every branch of industry, and any attempt to propose 

 their limitation would be regarded as downright folly, 

 and deliberate ruin of the industry; on the contrary 

 every new effort recorded of the introduction of some 

 more successful device is hailed with satisfaction and its 

 adoption heartily recommended, but curiously when we 

 come to such a practical device as elevators we see quite 

 another policy followed. 



Macjiinery is of common use in every line of indus- 

 try here; our ports are fitted with the most modern of 

 transporting means; our railways employ many labour 

 saving devices, but with the exception of elevators for 

 loading grain at the ports, machinery has been kept out 



