WORK AND MIGRATION

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 72, 22 September 1930, Page 8

WORK AND MIGRATION

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Under the heading,' "Selfish Folly," in a late issue you quote Miss Melville's denunciation of stopping immigration to New Zealand, -which that lady terms as "nothing less than suicidal folly." It is rather unfortunate for Miss Melville that in the same issue appeared Sir Arthur Keith's address to the International Eugenic Conference in Dorset, wherein he stated that racial deterioration in Britain had set in, followed by Colonel Bond's assertion that of two and a half-million civilians of military age, medically examined in 1918, only one-third were really fit, and that of six million school children "ono million were so mentally and physically defective they were unable to derive reasonable benefit from education." And yet, Sir, this is the source from which Miss Melville would have us draw upon unlimited supplies, even to the extent of crowding our country to Java's forty millions! Sir, I contend we have had since 1911 far too many of these people coming over at our expense. As one who came out in 1877 I say emphatically the type of immigrants of late .years are not in the same category as^he early I settlers. I am of course speaking of the majority. . I know there are exceptions. These late comers are essentially towns- j people, mostly: unskilled labourers, and their first aim is to get a job in or around a city. They have no knowledge of, or desire for, country or farm life, and unlike the Danes, Scandinavians, Dal-1 matians, and other hardy types, have no wish to save up and buy land and be independent. I am not blaming these immigrants in any way; It is not their fault they are unskilled and helpless. They are the fruits of our industrial system, under which for generations men and women have been crowded into slums and denied human rights. Xow in England, owing to altered economic conditions, they cannot be employed. No, Sir, New Zealand does not want these people. What it needs and must have is the small capitalist who is prepared to take up iand and produce .something from the beginning. A man who comes here with money in his pocket for developing our resources is an asset directly he lands,- not a continual and recurring debit. Let anyone who doubts what the small independent thrifty man can do here, visit Waihi in the Thames district and he will see thousands o£ fertile areas covered with dairy farms, where a few years v ago there was only pcrnb and fern. These people were mostly Dalmatians, Swedes, and Germans. The proofs are thenl, for nil to see. In conclusion, Sir, let Britain put its own house in order before lecturing v*. Qa sv visit

Home in 1013 I saw in one county alone thousands of fertile acres locked up in parks. Tins was in Devonshire, where in the county young men were as scarce as the clods. "They had all left," said a native, "because there was no pros-pect.»-I am, etc., & 18th September.