IMMIGRATION.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 718, 18 January 1910, Page 4

IMMIGRATION.

.! Owing,'tio doubt, to the very bad fright which the ' Government received a few: months ago. at the spectacle of an: aeuto : "unemployed" difficulty, -.very. little has been ' heard for- some time of the'immigration problem. -Although the congestion of tho labour markot appearod to suggest that--immigration -was' a thing no longer to. bo: encouraged, tho need for! suitable immigrants •is a permanent one." Wo do not know—nobody knows—what the Gov T ornment is. doing just nowj . or exactly what it has done since, in a panic, it ordered fcha discontinuance of assistance to. intending emigrants • from; Britain.' ■_ For.' a .considerable -time, a, good many of the most suitable ■ newcomers have arrived- through tho agency i.of : private > societies or have Come on their own account. Some excellent work : is /.being done. by. some of, these/; societies, of which by no means the least valuable 1 : is the ; East End Emi-. gration Fund. Its report for the year 1909 bas'reached us, and is an interesting and oheorful little .booklets The Fund.follows, as closely.as possible 4he principlo ; of sending out only whole families, "owing to 1 the enormous advantago it is to th 6 children that • they should grow, .lip .'healthy and "strong - before the bitter; exporicncc of want in England has told upon their, constitutions." ' Its emigrants are invariably successful . and happy, .it [ appears, in their new homes, a result .that'. is ' due mainly; t<i the ca-re that is taken to send forth only such families as are of good character and strong physique. During 1909, fifty-nine persons wero sent to Australia and New Zealand, and Mb. Barbatt, a member of tho Fund's committee, is ablo. to givo a most satisfactory account of these people. very, properly - emphasises the need for capablo farm labourers and domestic servants, a need which does not exist in respect of skilled mechanics and general labourers,. The great difficulty- is the high cost of living that, meets: the:' newcomers on their arrival, and. the difficulty of securing, good guidance for them. sMr'. STtTDHOiiME, of Canterbury, is quoted as - having told : Mr. Bareatt that "a farm labourer who has once, got; through the' first few months, and has established a charactor : as a good: worker, 'will soon go ahead," and that New Zealand offers a far finer opening for a real farni labourer than Canada. The Fund is doing admirablo work, is not'ovef-ambitious and is prudent in its methods of selection. Such societies, deserve all the encouragomont that tho Government 'cab give them; they caii ensure a bettor sort of immigration than. can be 1 expected from State officials wofking in the l'outine manner naturftl to them. It is worth noting, by the way,-t-hftt the Fund is oiily ono of 'hundreds Of societies established in -Britain by "private enterprise" for tho betterment of human conditions through one means or another. . England is tho home of this sort of "personal ser-

vice": it will oease tp deserve such a title when wKat our Radicals' call "humanism," but what all sensible people know to be simply debilitatitig State "paternalism," finds its way into tho Statute-books. ,-.