IMMIGRATION.

Evening Star, Issue 3860, 8 July 1875, Page 3

IMMIGRATION.

To the Editor, S: l®.—Your correspondent “A Working Man introduces a subject that requires investigation, No one can deny that a large number of people have been brought out here by false statements made by the Home agents. Perhaps the first question put by an intending emigrant to those gentlemen is, is there any reasonable prospect of my finding employment at my occupation in New Zealand, yet who ever heard of anyone being advised not to go’ I would ask is: it just that men should be induced to leavo_ steady employment and comfortable homes in the old country to meet with misery and hopeless poverty here ? But why do you complain, some might say, you came here of your own free will ? True; but as for complaining we have just cause for that. Were we told that when we arrived here wo would find the place overstocked with workmen, and month after month ships bringing more? Were we told that we would have to wander about the country week after week seeking employment, and if there is a man wanted now and again there is such a scrambling of applicatns that it is quite disheartening? “AS Working Man ” proposes forming a committee to wait upon the Provincial Government to ask them what can be done for us. But what would be the result ? "Why, to make dinmond-crackerß of us at starvation pay. I think that few of us came here for such a purpose, but that is no remedy at nil. What I suggest is, that the Government be requested to investigate the subject, A committee of working-men could be formed to represent us, whose duty it would be to make out a list of the number callings of the

unemployed, and to discover what prospect there is of their services being required in the future. If this were done it would be found that there is in the Colony already a sufficient number of tradesmen for all the work that will be required for a long time to come. Instructions should be given to the Home agents to grant no more free passages to people following those occupations found to be overdone. If such a plan were taken it would do good more ways than one, for, besides introducing the proper sort of men when they were wanted, it would allow those who are here already to find steady employment: and surely it is for the good of the Colony that every individual member of it should be fully employed and prosperous. —I am, &c., Got of Work,