IMMIGRATION.

Evening Star, Issue 2933, 13 July 1872, Page 2

IMMIGRATION.

To the Editor.

Sin, —The cry is, Still they come ! and still may they continue to come is the piayer of the wealthy ; whilst immigration officers respond, Amen! Now, sir, whilst it may be desirable to introduce more population into a young country like this, and whiLt the country itself may be superior in a point of labor to any of the adjacent Colonies, yet I consider those people who lauded here yesterday have clone so under great disadvantage. “ Now is the winter of our discontent.” Labor is almost wholly suspended, and men are coming into towu with their summer earaiugs to bridge

the winter over, and get ready for a start again. What then is to become of these people, many of whom land with little money, and all of them vQid of experience* Little doubt but all the women, and perhaps a few of the men, will get employment; for employers of labor are ever ready to snap up new arrivals at a greatly reduced rate of wages, and perhaps for this reason prefer them to old Colonists ; but those who fail to get employment, what of them ? It seems a want of consideration to introduce people into the Colony at this time of the year when country work is stagnant, whereas all who come could be employed to advantage in the summer season were they to land here then. Do these hopeful “strangers in a strange land” become possessors of an inheritance of forty acres, or is that special distinction reserved for the Scandinavian exiles? If so, why not confer upon our own people the beuelits that may accrue from immigration ? Give us English, Scotch, or Irish, and, if others choose to come, let us not hinder them to our own exclusion. Perhaps it were fruitless to put in a plea for old colonists, whose labors have enriched the country and helped to make it what it is. If the gold returns be compared with the number of men employed in getting that gold, charity would ask in wonder “ How do these men live ? If Mr Brogden will extend his offer to the Colony he will get hundreds of men at 5s per diem, who would rather take that with constant employment, than live as hatters and sluice old gullies for a quarter ounce per week. The Colony is not bad, not so bad as often represented, and certainly better in a labor point of view than Victoria. What seems to cripple it is the eagerness of the Government to get population here, and not caring what becomes of them after that.—l am. &c ,

A Digger in Town,