Child Immigration

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 26, 1 September 1911, Page 5

Child Immigration

By CITIZEN.

There is a movement on foot to im- '• pose upom the coloniee the maintenance of the most hopeless victims of Britain's grinding indu-Sftrialism. Some two months ago the Duke of Ma-rlborough urged in the House of Lords the desirability of deporting upon a large scale what he politely callect "poor law and reformatory children" —- in plain English, the child inmates of workhouses and reform atoTy institutions, the incipient criminals, and the offspring of social degenerates. He stated that the colonies would welcome them in thousands.

Although a-statement by the Duke, of Marl borough, if taken by itself, may not have much weight, there are sufficient straws floating about to indicate how the wind blows. A "Child Emigration Society" is already in existence, dealing with workhouse children. At a meeting held within the last month, Sir James Crichton Browne said: "Children sent out would become a very valuable asset to the Dominions. The colonials had waste lands and Britain had waste human beings. Let them be brought together." 'There is a beautiful epigrammatic simplicity about this statement that would be more appreciated in Britain -than in the colonies. We may have waste lands, but we are not inclined to have them peopled by waste humans; A later cable reports that Sir John Kirk, Director of the Ragged School Union, is now on his way out with the object of placing a large number of boys in employment. A reverend gemtlomam at Nelson tries to tone down this news by stating that the object is to enlist sympathy, etc., but it is certain that Sir John Kirk is not com--1 ing merely to haad round the hat.

There is also Mr. Sedgwick, now rounding up the larrikins of London and Liverpool

This extraordinary anxiety to get rid of children likely to grow up a burden or a disgrace, or both, is explained by recent British legislation. By the National Insurance Bill, nearly 15 million indigent persons are to l»e insured against sickness and unemployment. This measure, and the old age pensions together will oast over 40 millions annually. When a sum of 20 millions is lavished in connection with Coronation mummeries, when the cost of a single ball is eighty thousand pounds, it is plain that the tine armed incomes of the titled xnd untitlecl loafers who ride on the back of labor cannot be expected to ■maintain, the derelicts of society, so they ane to be dumped on to the ooloit res* "Rubbish shot here," will henceforth be the label of the overseas parts of the Empire. What are the workers going to do about it, for it will be the workers and the workers' children who will be the associates of the sweepings of British workhouses ? Very little sympathy can be expected from the Government, for Ward is the evangelist of the "higher and purer" Imperialism, and it must never be forgotten that in Britain the Empire means England, and England alone.