C.—l

80

experience, more especially when it is regarded in the light of assisting settlement; but 1 think that with this, more than with any other system of carrying on works, very much depends on the spirit in which the whole thing is carried out by all connected with it—from the engineer and his assistants to the men themselves. Bobebt H. Beaney, Boad Surveyor.

Return showing Number of Men employed on Co-operative Road Contracts in the Pahiatua District from the 1st April, 1894, to the 31st March, 1895.

Average total for year, 78. Total number of new men employed, 96.

WANGANUI. The number of contracts completed under the system was 188 ; the number of men employed ranging from 64, in April, 1894, to 215, in September, 1894. The nature of the works was much the same as usual, consisting of felling, stumping, clearing, and formation of dray-roads and bridletracks, with construction of bridges and culverts, and occasional contracts at metal-breaking, timber-sawing and squaring, ordinary bushfelling, &c. The work has varied from light to very heavy, and the weather from unusually rough last winter to very fine last summer. The wages earned, partly as a consequence of these variations, but chiefly owing to the varying capabilities of the men themselves, ranged from Is. 6d. a day to 12s. 2d. a day —the minimum wage being earned by men entirely inexperienced to manual labour of any kind, at a bushfelling contract, Otaihape; and the maximum by a party of workmen of long experience at a very high papa-cliff, Mangawharariki, where the ordinary price was somewhat raised on account of the dangerous nature of the place. The number of hours worked has varied from ten a day in settled summer weather to four a day in very unsettled weather in wet districts. There are always many more applications for work than can be attended to, though the wages earned are not such as to tempt men to leave ordinary private employment. As a general rule, employment on co-operative works has always been given to settlers, in the particular districts where work is situated, in preference to granting it to members of the ordinary floating population of labourers. Ordinary labourers may be reasonably employed in places remote from settlement; but, wherever possible, settlers themselves have the preference ; for many of this class who are at present taking up land have only very limited capital, and without occasional outside work they would not be able to struggle through the first few, and always the most difficult, years of their occupancy. So many small-farm associations have, of recent years, been formed with so few large employers of labour among them that settlers have to largely depend for outside labour on Government works. Generally speaking, settlers do not make such high earnings, nor do they get through the work so quickly, as ordinary labourers, partly because they have not followed roadmaking, &c, as a business, and partly because they are more often off the works attending to their own sections. The site of the work soon becomes so far away that they find it difficult to live on their sections and at the same time attend to their contracts. One advantage in the employment of settlers is that they do not have the same difficulty in getting credit as unknown men who have no stake in the district. On most works, if they are carried on long enough, all the best men gradually gravitate into parties, and leave all the less able men to form parties by themselves, thus constantly tending to increase the disparity between the amounts earned. It is much the best way to let men form their own parties. But the average number of men in parties is at present too small; there should not be less than four or five men in a party, and preferably more. The contracts, if made larger, would be fewer in number, and, therefore, more easily supervised. Instead of fixing the sum of £80 as the maximum of any contract, it would be better to make a rule that no party should have a contract amounting in the aggregate to more than £30 for each member of the party. Again, it is much

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