CRUELTY TO IMMIGRANTS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 296, 30 October 1874, Page 3

CRUELTY TO IMMIGRANTS.

When the'history of the New Zealand Public Works Policj r comes to be written, probably the feature that will appear most unsatisfactory will be the shipment and after management of the immigrants. A few years ago it r " was accepted as a public truth that the Colonial debt would strangle the then colonists, unless a large population could be introduced to share in the. burden of future taxation. Accordingly it was deemed politic to enter the European labor market and offer inducements, in competition with Canada and the States. Agents were sent Home to drum up, by force of eloquence ; and, we may as well say at once, misrepresentations, suitable immigrants who, for the promise of a free passage, could be induced to leave their homes for the good things promised in the mw world. When the agents had a difficulty in filling the ship with suitable living freight, and labor continued scarce in the Colony—a harvest, too,. looming in view-—we clamored for more immigrants, and pressure was brought to bear on the agents, so that ; their subsequent orders really authorised an indiscriminate sending out of who' ever they could catch, irrespective of :sny special adaptabilities for a young Colony. Not that we would join in the hue and cry Whiun finds food for spleen and selfexcuse in traducing the characters of those that have come out—scum, riff-raff &c, as if shiploads, 400 and upwards, for the most part consisting of uneducated people, would not contain many of the germs of evil which a sudden rooting-up of home associations, to be replaced by unsympathetic contact with strangws, wovdd be sure to develop into active vice or even crime. When returns are laid on the tables of the British Parliament (as they will, be), showing the death rate among the children on these pest ships of ours, it niaywell be asked if our greed for hot-house colonization, to reduce our own taxation, justified the ..sacrifice of human life those returns will bear witness of. We can understand; however,' that this child murder—for a little extra expense in the shape of better diet; and less people in eacli ship, would have reduced the rate to a minimum—may find excusers who-, will adduce the loss of life in foreign ships as perhaps being greater. As we write, we note a ship just arrived at Wellington, the Cartvale, with .418 passengers, and recording during the voyage a death rate of nineteen, nearly all children. Whatever excuse may be vamped, up for this con-stantly-recurring loss of life at sea, on shore there is no excuse for inhumanity when exhibited. If what has come under onr observation be a sample, as we much fear, of what is going on in every part of New Zealand, we may well have cause to fear whether immigration, guided in such a manner, is likely to be followed by beneficial results. It will be remembered that several ships arrived in Otago one.after the other, at very short intervals, during the last winter months, with such rapidity that great difficulty was reported in the attempt to find house-room for the passengers—the barracks and every available nook being filled. In the midst of this confusion, when the Government doubtless were shrinking from the least expense which would be at all adequate to house the families in temporary buildings until the summer, contractors were urging that hands should be sent to the vicinity of their individuationtracts. The agents jumped at the chance apparently, telling the applicants for cheap labor, " If you can persuade a lotto go— especially of the families—we will send them up, an:! supply tents, and seven days' rations." In this way, sixteen families, early in stormy September,-were sent up in waggons supposed to be going to the head race—the land of promise, of tropical climate without rain. When arriving at Eden Creek the weather was at its worst (what that worst was will be easily remembered), and the waggons, after going up to the race, returned to the camp on the main road—the bulk of the men declaring that it would simply kill the women and children to attempt to camp where they had gone, up in the wet and snow. The waggoners, however, had done their part of the contract, and a shift had to be made somehow. Through the kindness of the few settlerß scattered about the Idaburn, some for a time were able to get an old hut, others a stable, others a ruin of a hut over which they stretched the slight, flimsy tent provided for them. In this way a day or two were got over; but what were the men to do? They could not work while there was no covering for their little ones ; to be idle was to starve. Some tried the head race, and found that even the fair promises ot Bs. per diem—so freely offered in the depot if they would go—was not to be fulfilled, but piecework (that likely enough depending on goods being taking at the authorised store) at rates which, simply meant starvation or hopelesß debt. A few got employment at the reef, and ot.iters drifted away, getting employment as they could. The few families that settled at the reef we can say something of, and they may be taken as representing a fair average of the sufferings eudured, as being about the first to get work. One family of four young children., were taken in by Mr. Howard of the reef, who gave up to them liis own warm hut. Uwiu'g. however, to the frightful exposure which had been undergone the mother was seized with a severe cold, settling on the lungs, and inducing weakness, which, fostered by the want of proper nutriment, has reduced, her to a very low condition indeed. She has continued in this state for over a month, until removed on Tuesday last to the District Hospital. Another family—the husband being employed at the reefcowered in a deserted sod wing, originally put up as a break-wind to a tent, the sides of which were broken down. Over these crumbling remains one of these wretched tents (so graciously supplied without any fly) .was stretched, the ends being pegged in between sods and stones as best they might. " On windy days, such as last Saturday, in the snOw squalls I had to get father up from the pit to come and fix the roof, which had blown off, or nearly so," said the mother of'this family of four children—one, five months old at ■ the breast.. Hearing a woman was lying ill j in this hovel, we had gone to it, but there ! being no door but an' aperture about 3 or 1 4> feet wide, a bit of loose calico Wowing in, and. seeing, as we passed, a pallet ot straw on the floor we hesitated to "call,and had indeed passed, when the inmate —looking pallid and nervous'ns a ghost—put her head out. At once turning, we saw that she was in a very lev,' state, scarcely able to stanrl—her limbs all trembling, and complaining of great pains in the chest, with a terrible cough. '•' I have not been abb to rat a bit oi rnything this good while, and the child.lying a crops mr

S' ems to. crush me tike:" and thrn. when we-said-.that the child should be taken from, butll have nothing for it. It-w-ould starve. I have no milk to give it." When we sawlth'e half-starved baby taking its frail-life 1 second time, as it were, from the mptiicr, who, too weak in mind and .body to refuse ib, looked in he:*" misery more a denizen of. another-world than a human being,-"we could not help thinking:—lf these-people had represented trout or salmon they would have been cared for. '-If f hoy had been prize shorthorns, or horses, sheds ' warm and dry" would liavo hr-en provided for them ; but, being as they are, the wet winter earth, the ruined sod, and t!he single ply of calico, with the rain misting through, it, is their sufficient share to live or die in as they can. The next family were a little better —though no better secured from the weather; the mother, with perhaps a stronger constitution, and better spirit, had battled throughfthe same attack —the wracking angry-tonfed cough being still retained. Two mothers of eight little ones (out of four) had to' s be brought into the Hospital not a day too soon, fairly starved with cold, reduced to such a low slate that the greatest care and nursing will be necessary to enable them once more to look after the young ones dependent upon them. It is nonsense totalk about the hardships of the early settlers as compared with this. Hardship was expoeted and warded against. The men at'any rate went first, and prepared a dry ii'earth for their wives and children, if any. Here deceit is employed to by any men;is get the families far away in the interior. If any die it is only a per centage on the shipment, and might nave been wcrae. How the children have suffered we need not say. The fact that these families came out, at our cost, oK- their own free will, will hardly excuse our neglect in the eyes of the great I Am, with whom they and we have to do.

White misery, of which this is a sample, is going on, the Premier glibly perorates over the wonderful" powers displayed by Otago and Canterbury to absorb population. Sleek delegates rub in the soft sol'der, and make more strenuous exertions to'push super-abundant population out of sight from Dunedin'; Truly, the great illimitable ocean, and the cemeteries of the -interior of Otago, are wonderful absorbents of population:- We shall be able to see-whether practically there is anything in the theory of-philosophers that a race is improved by -being exposed to crushing hardships, and by the survival only"of the fittest.