The Shipping and Seamen’s Act, 1894, and the amending Acts of the two following years, mitigate the old-fashioned severity of punishments for refusal of duty, assaults on the high seas, and other nautical offences.  The forecastle and the accommodation thereof become subject to the fiat of the Government inspector, as are factories on shore.  Regular payment of wages is stipulated for, overcrowding amongst passengers is forbidden.  Complete powers are given to the marine authorities to enforce not only a full equipment of life-boats and life-saving appliances, but boat-drill.  Deck loading is restricted, and the Plimsoll mark insisted on.  But the portion of the Act which gave rise to the intensest opposition was the proviso by which all sailing vessels are obliged to carry a certain complement of able seamen and ordinary seamen, according to their tonnage, while steamers must carry a given number of able seamen, ordinary seamen, firemen, trimmers, and greasers, according to their horse-power.  Foreign vessels, while engaging in the New Zealand coasting-trade, have to pay their crews the rate of wages current on the coast.  Parliament was warned that the passing of this Act would paralyze the trade of the Colony, but passed it was—­with certain not unreasonable amendments—­and trade goes on precisely as before.

In 1891, moreover, the colonial laws relating to mining generally, and to coal-mining especially, were consolidated and amended.  An interesting feature in the New Zealand Coal Mines’ Act is the provision by which mine-owners have to contribute to a fund for the relief of miners or the families of miners in cases where men are injured or killed at work.  Every quarter the owners have to pay a halfpenny per ton on the output, if it be bituminous coal; and a farthing a ton, if it be lignite.  Payment is made into the nearest Post Office Savings Bank and goes to the credit of an account called “The Coal Miners’ Relief Fund.”  From 1891 mineral rights are reserved in lands thereafter alienated by the Crown.

Most of the Labour laws are watched and administered by the Department of Labour, a branch of the public service created in 1891.  It costs but L7,000 or L8,000 a year, much of which is recouped by factory fees and other receipts.  It also keeps labour statistics, acts as a servants’ registry office, and by publishing information, and by shifting them from congested districts, endeavours to keep down the numbers of the unemployed.  In this, though it is but a palliative, it has done useful and humane work, aided—­so far as the circulation of labour goes—­by the State-owned railways.

[Illustration: 

TE WAHAROA HENARE KAIHAU, M.H.R.  HON.  JAMES CARROLL, M.H.R
RIGHT HON.  R.J.  SEDDON (Premier) MAHUTA (The Maori “King")

Photo by_ BEATTIE & SANDERSON, Auckland.]