EMIGARTION TO NEW ZEALAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 321, 29 September 1874, Page 4

EMIGARTION TO NEW ZEALAND.

We {Post) have been favored with the following extract from a letter written by a gentleman at home, who ajdetip interest :in promoting emigration to this Colony ;— „ :0 , London, 20tfk July, 187.4. About 22,00Q; emigrants have been already sent ont (or arranged to sail) u -VIST!r fre^eaaaages. I have sent a few papers by Singapore route for your pernuU respecting emigration meetings i* cWn&flpn with; tfew Zealand.; which may interest' you. When the AgentGeneral; commenced free passages, a shipping agent and broker applied for an ageooy for four counties; intending to work fne'dißtrict by sub-agents. X told him they would not send him half a dozen applicants a month, that he had better go into the matter as a business, ao3< rouse op^jia district himself— hold meetings, and have lectures, and dissolving » views, and flood the towns and villages with printed letters from emigrants, and other readable New Zealand nfaftef. ; I promised to render what aid I could, and to attend_hi6 meetings on Saturday .evenings and two or three others if I could reich the town after omce^hoprß and to get back to London inl'iime 'nex^t, morning. My son arranged at once for fifty meetings, and afterwerds for another fifty, but before alt 'the litter were held his agency was closed, <*.*., on 30th June last, the Agent-General not requiring any extra aid, having completed his number for Otago and Canterbury. My son is a capital sketcher, and prepared in water colors a set of racy and amusing sheets OBjdoubie elephant drawing. One was an> agricultural laborer at home in England, with his smock frock and heavy boots £10 or l2lbs weight); another was navvies. |n New Zealand at work in a cntting-r-those were the fellows we wanted, aad what we wanted them to work, at; another was the pay table and the big piles of money nswiy ior the men; another was a fellow "=pbcklting his" £8 11s (see report of "S???? 8 *P new Bpapers), with his face **$ deli g bt ; another was the smoking meal' of joints of mutton waiting for the New Zealand workman, enough to make him dance after a hard day's work; another showed bis progress as a jsmill sub-contractor, giving his directions to His' gang of men; another, his new home, built after 10 years of a *?*?7 Jpd«»«ry and perseverance— a ntae.comfortable looking farmstead; and another shows him riding on a handsome steed to the Hoaae as an M.H.R. O&M.L.C There are a few others whitfh I forget at the moment. But you cannot conceive the electrical effect produced ( by the unrolling of these immflflse sheets: to an audience of 1400 or 1600, and; sometimes 2000 people, in a cowotf towrij Corn Exchange, or Town Haft, hd previous intimation having been gftfa P,f such, illustrations. I could go again to any of ihesa towns and dtwall the inhabitants to an emigration meetin& *? S* 6 : * hese sketches. We always had ve?y large meetings, and frequently the ; Btijeetaj were full, as many outside as inside, simply because the meetings were well worked up, by posters, hand bills, "Sandwich men," newspaper advertisements, town criers, and a New Zealand banner outside the place of meeliog ,for a few days before. The applicants were not, however, entered immediately after the meetings. They hid'fo apply, after any excitement bad cooled down, necessitating other visits to the towns, and. after they had been selected, and examined, were finally approved by Mr Carter. Of course my son only secured those resulting immediately from his meetings— Me Jtfit Jritti* merely— those who took more time to think the matter over and delayed their decision were picked op by the National Agricultural Laborers' Union, or applied direct to the AgentGeneral, who must have received Hundreds and hundreds of applicants as the result of our efforts. We know it was so — indeed I have been told at the Agent-General's office that they could always tell where we bad been holding meetings from the number of letters they received requesting forms. Howevfer as. my son was satisfied with what he Becared, the Government were quite welcome to the "afterflow," which is BtUl rolling on and will do so to the end ofcthe chapter. The object of any one of his meetings might have been defeate^, b y.: a drunken rabble, paid and organised by the Farmere' Opposition. We have also to contend with newspaper correspondence. It was not to be expected that we could descend on a district and make every one " New Zealand mad" (give them "New Zealand on the Brain" we called it), without being denounced and anathematised and finding New Zealand held up as the land of cannibals, earthquakes, murders, poverty, wretchedness, disaffection, &c. When I contrast what my son has done with his agency for the benefit of the Government with what the other agents (say five-sixths of them) ibave done, I can see plainly that it would pay Government to enR B S?i enterprise and dash in preference to tbe^slow-going lot who sit on. their shop stools waiting till applicants call to ask if they crd "emigrate outi" who ms/a^pntmTbUl outside their shop, issue, ; a form when asked for one, receive their capitation; fee from the AgentGeneral, but never spend a penny of it back again in any way.

conducted, or healthier- looking girls have not reached these shores for many a day.