Mr. H.S. FISH ON IMMIGRATION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3909, 30 January 1884, Page 4

Mr. H.S. FISH ON IMMIGRATION.

At the meeting held on the 18th met. under the auspices of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, the member for DuTiedin .South made sorno very apposite and very sensible remarks on the subject, of immigration. Certain politicians, who especially vaunt themselves as champions of thfl working man, decry immigration as being calculated to bring down wages by overfloodiug the labor markot. They strike a popular note, perhaps, with the moro unthinking , , but the general intelligence oi the laboring classes is proof agaiiiHt such fallacies, in Now Zealnnd they have the light of experience, a.s well as their own common -sense, to guide them. Wages never.were hiirher, and employment was never so plentiful, as when immigrants ■were being introduced in great numbers under the Immigration aud Public Works scheme It may bo said that railway construction and other public? works provided employment as the immigrants camo in, but this was only the case to ti very limited extent. Moro than 100,000 immigrants were introduced, and out of these a very small proportion have been employed by the Government in any capacity. They havo been absorbed into tho general occupations of tho country, and havo aided in its productions and development. In all the Australian colonies population is the one tiling needed, but Now Zealand is exocptionally circumstanced in regard to natural advantages of climate and soil. Immigrants, qualified for agricultural pursuits especially, could not bo poured in too rapidly whilst tlioro arc fields for energy a? 4 ej#rpnso m many other directions. It can nd longer p 0 «&id with truth that hind is unattaiimu.S by persons desiring to settle in tho interior. Tho " Crown Lands Guide" kliowb that in every part of the Ojlony land, and good tojjd, tw, Iβ os>en $o several eveten^j