A HOME VIEW OF EMIGRATION.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1614, 23 April 1879, Page 4

A HOME VIEW OF EMIGRATION.

We (Dunedin “ Herald ”) have been favored with the following extract from a Private letter, written to a gentleman in ffinodin from a well-informed correspondent in Kent. It is peculiarly interesting at the present time, giving as it does an authentic view of the state of affairs at Home, and gome information as to the immigrants by the Stad Haarlem :

“ Things are dark here. After a season of unparalleled material prosperity, every branch of trade has received a check. The great diminution—some millions—of the money passing through the clearing house in London shows the shrinkage in the business done; the antagonism between classes, displayed in the strikes of the hands against employers, indicates instability in the existing conditions of society. Co-operation is one attempt to solve the difficulty; as far as it tends to foster ready money payments instead of credit, it will do good. The tendency of the few rich is to become enormously richer; as in the case of landlords who have let many acres on ninety-nine years’ leases at moderate ground rents, to be covered with streets and squares of palatial residences, the full ownership of which will revert to their representatives in a generation or two. The grand scale on which manufacturing, and even retail shop-keeping is conducted, tends in the same direction. The f ieilities afforded by the electric telegraph and by the railway have enabled buyer and seller to deal directly with each other without the intervention of the middle man. The tiller of the ground has long been hopelessly debarred from any expectation of acquiring the ownership of any portion of the soil he cultivates. It seems to me as if we are about to try the experiment of making the social pyramid stand on its apex. Meanwhile the education of the lower classes is going on apace in the towns by means of School Boards, and in the villages the clergy are obliged to teach the young rustics enough to earn the Government grants. As soon as the working classes give up drink we must prepare for social changes that, whether brought about quietly or otherwise, will be a real revolution. Emigration affords a temporary relief, and postpones the inevitable day of settlement. Some six hundred agricultural folk, heads of families, young men, lasses, and children—the very pick of Kent —sailed on Friday week from Plymouth in the Stad Haarlem for New Zealand. The men understand hop culture and the management of fruit orchards, AMr Simpson, the secretary of the Kent and Sussex Agricultural Laborers’ Union, accompanies them, and promises to return for another contingent as soon as he has seen every adult fairly started. They take out with them 200 sets of the finest sorts of hops; I hope they will enjoy the beer in moderation in their new homes, where they will have motives for self-restraint, altogether wanting here. Should you have any opportunity of watching the success of these folk*, I should be glad to hear from you about them, though personally I have no aoquainiui.ee among them. Farming is unremui.erative now; the low price of wheat, American competition in dairy produce and in live and dead meat, want of capital, insecurity of tenure, game laws, are serious impediments. Almost of necessity relief is sought by reducing wages; in the purely agricultural districts, these are now down to 12s a week. Is New Zealand really the right place for the better class of agricultural laborers to flee to F”