The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2343, 5 October 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1870.

The chief catechiser at Mr Macandrew’s meeting at the Clutha was a Mr Ralston, who seemed to express the views of many of those who live by labor on the question of Immigration. The common-sense Anew of the question is, that no country can be prosperous without a large, well-em-ployed population. Where a country is thinly peopled, they are debarred from those comforts and conveniences that result from subdivision of labor : they are reduced to primitive, and neccessarily rude and imperfect appliances ; labor is consequently unproductive—and, though they may live in the midst of abundance, not being able to avail themselves of it, they live in a state of real or comparative barbarism. But this, though true, is only discernible through a course of induction too abstract for general acceptance. A writer in the Fortnightly Review says that a great deal of writing on economical subjects is “ vague, personal, full “ of sterile and illusory controversies” ; and to this personal element which pervades the reasoning of the working classes, is to be attributed their opposition to immigration. When work is scarce, as it was a month ago, it is very difficult to persuade men that the introduction of some hundreds of hands

will tend to raise, instead of to depress wages. They point to the immediate, not to the prospective result. They say : These men will work for less wages than we have been obtaining rather than starve ; their passages have been partly paid out of taxes to which we have contributed, and to that extent you are using our money to reduce our wages. Now this, under our present system, is undeniably true, undei given conditions : such, for instance, as the combination of circumstances that led to the complaints of the unemployed some six weeks ago, when a long, dreary winter, a stringent money market, and quick voyages of immigrant ships brought to our shores a number of people, to find labor foi w hom, at the moment, seemed almost impossible. The bad time has passed. We hear no more complaints ; the initiation of large public works has absorbed our apparent surplus labor, and the trade of the agitator is suspended, But the lesson ought not to ‘be forgotten. The Evening Star was blamed at the time for pointing out that no adequate preparation was made by the Government to find work for assisted immigrants. We should haveacknowledged it was an error on our parts, had preparation been impossible. We affirm, now that the pressure is over, that the Provincial Government was blameable ; that they ought to have foreseen the evil; that they could easily and profitably have provided against it; and that, when humanity and necessity forced them to find men work, they were obliged to do it at a very heavy cost to the Province, We know there are those who imagine Governments have no right to interfere with such matters. They would allow them to spend part of the land revenue on introduction of labor—that, these social economists do not consider interfering—and they argue that when the immigrant is landed, he must be left to take cure of himself, and find work as he can. This doctrine is carrying the laissez faire of political economy beyond its ultimatum. It is meddling on one side, and doing nothing on the other. We hold that were immigration studied as a science, no such doctiine could ever find acceptance amongst us. It would be adopted as a means to an end. It would be considered as tending to the increase of wealth to those who are here and to those who come amongst us ; and to pay men two shillings a yard for breaking stones for road-mending, that could liave been better done by machinery for threepence or less, is a loss to the country of the difference. But, the Government may say, nothing else was in our power. There were votes for the construction and repair of certain roads, and there were no votes for other purposes : we had no alternative. We admit the fact; but it only proves what we wish to establish, that immigration has not hitherto been conducted with the slightest consideration for the laborer who is here, nor for him who is introduced. That it has been conducted on no principle worthy of the name ; that with constantly-recurring injustice before Executive eyes, they seem blind to the necessity for finding a remedy ; that we believe a remedy is easy to be found; and that it is the duty of the Government to make such inquiries as will lead to the adoption of a system calculated to develop the productive resources of the Province, and to mitigate the severe pressure of those drawbacks which have compelled many willing to work to pass months of idleness and distress. Something has been attempted in the form of a labor agency : this is one step. We again point to our goldfields as an ever present and profitable mine of wealth, lying comparatively idle. We may be sure the bad times we have passed through will recur —and now that we have time is the opportunity to prepare to meet them.