The Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1886. AN EMIGRATION BUREAU.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1685, 15 April 1886, Page 2

Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1886. AN EMIGRATION BUREAU.

i Our cable news a few days ago conveyed the intelligence that an emigrants 1 information bureau had been established m London, m connection with the Colonial Office, for the) purpose of supplying reliable information to persons desiring to emigrate to any of the British Colonies. Such an institution should prove of incalculable benefit, m guiding the steps of emigrants of the several classes we really do want —as for instance, men of capital, or men of some little means and the habits of rural life to enable them to swell the class of small landowners, analogous to the peasant proprietors of Europe, without which we can have no large rural population. Intending emigrants, as. a rule, have very little knowledge, and that little very incorrect, of the kind of country to which they have determined to embark. We say '. without hesitation that no country on the face of the globe, existing depression notwithstanding, which offers an all-round better field for emigrants of the right kind than New Zealand, where they can create homes for themselves, and become their own landlords. Other.countries have been lauded to the skies as the emigrants 1 arcadia, but experience has proved the bitter truth to the sorrow of the deceived ones. The reader may recollect, for example, the tremendous trumpet blown by the London \Timss four or five years ago on behalf of Manitoba. A rush of emigrants was the consequence, and m the main, we understand, of a very desirable sort m the several classes. But (as the New Zealand Herald points but) the emigration collapsed as suddenly as it rose. The natural circumstances did not turn out as expected. The new arrivals fduhd plenty of good soil, and the distance to the English .market is comparatively short, but few of them had any real idea of the length or severity of the Arctic winter, and what the attendant surprises and disappointments would amount to. He who went to raise meat for the London market discovered what he had forgotten, or never heard of, that the ground is covered with spow nearly half the year, when it is impossible to graze stock. Ar- j tizans, labourers, all persons engaged m out-door pursuits have to lie by idle, and suspend the earning of wages during that prolonged period every year. The life of pioneer settlement -amid those Arctic hardships proved too much for most women and children unused to them, and numbers of persons packed up and; removed southward to the r United States," while many others returned to England. It stands to reason that people accustomed to such a climate would not betake themselves to it if they knew what was before them. In any new country, with even the most genial temperature, the settler has to encounter hardships m the early years ot his enterprise; buc they become insuperable if added to by the trying circumstances of an Arctic winter to which he has been a total stronger* The rise And fall

of the emigration to Manitoba affords one instance of the occassion for the Colonial Office m London to establish a bureau, where the man anxious to seek his fortune m the colon ; es can obtain full and authentic information to guide him. It is pre-eminently m the matter of climate that New Zealand stands superior to all other fields of emigration. Here we can turn out cattle to graze all the year round ; here we have no prolonged frosts and snows ; no disastrous or protracted droughts. We dare predict that if this emigrants' bureau fulfils its functions intelligently," the result will be a large accession of emigrants of the right sort to this fair colony, with its vast areas of fine conn try awaiting settlement. We anticipate most satisfactory results from the working of the institution referred to.