Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/53

 be traced all the evils that have afflicted this infant settlement.” A third writer (that on “South Australia”) adds—“they may be traced, not to a want of labour absolutely, for plenty of workmen were taken to the colony by the first emigrant capitalists; but to the want of arrangements for having constancy and combination of labour.”

These writers explain their meaning by asserting, that when the indentured servants, on their arrival in the colony, found good land so easily to be acquired, they left their masters with impunity, and became landowners.

These representations have already been shown to be in material points erroneous, by quoting the Government regulation, which prevented labourers from acquiring land without consent of their masters; and by demonstrating that, to the latter, the services of their people were secured, by an efficient administration of the laws. It is true, many of the labouring class went to Van Diemen’s Land, but this was with consent of their masters. Some capitalists (looking chiefly to the land they would acquire from the number of people they brought out) had large families in their service; but, finding the outlay required for their maintenance to exceed so much their expectations, they granted discharges to as many as they could dispense with.

The rate of labour in the colony has always been high—from thirty to forty shillings a month, with rations costing about as much more. The usual daily wages of a labourer have been five shillings, and, of an artificer, from eight to ten.

As to the scarcity of labour there, the author does not recollect any period at which agricultural or other labourers could not be had, unless occasionally in the harvest time; and then those farmers who offered higher wages than ordinary seldom failed in getting them. The contrary indeed was not unfrequent—that labourers had a difficulty in getting employment.