EMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 130, 19 October 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

EMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA

DEARTH OF BERTHS. The London press has discovered that emigration to Australia is rapidly increasing, and the resultant publicity given to the Commonwealth has indirectly embarrassed the officials of the various Australian offices at Home. Many men who want to go to Australia cannot wait for accommodation, and go somewhere else. - 'So anxious are English emigrants to go to Australia now," says a shipping agent, "that often when the shipping Companies notify me the evening before the ship sails that a berth has fallen vacant, I telegraph to a. man in the north of England, and he travels all night to seize the opportunity of sailing. Often, too, men come to the docks and actually wait by the last tender to an emigrant ship in the hope that even at the very last moment they may secure a berth." Berths are, always available in he Argentine boats, and hundreds of Englishmen are going there rather than wait. Even Peru is trying to attract men from England. The chief emigration officer of the New South Wales Government in London declares, after making a round of the provinces, that "Australia is losing this year tens of thousands of the most desirable settlors through lack of steamer berths. Shipping agents," he says, "get disgusted and say, 'Oh, it's no use talking about Australia —you mnst go somewhere else.' No third-class passenger to-day who walks into a shipping office in London with money in his pocket can get a passage to Australia before December." The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth has said that every able-bodied man who arrives in Australia is worth at least £2OO to the country, and on this basis it is estimated that the lack of shipping accommodation will cost Australia £2,000,000 this year.