"A WELL ORGANISED SYSTEM."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3080, 29 December 1908, Page 4

"A WELL ORGANISED SYSTEM."

Enquiries made by the Federal Government are reported to indicate that there is in operation "a wellorganised system" for the introduction of Chinese into Australia and one which has been working for some time. A similar conclusion must have suggested itself to the unofficial mind from the mere look of things, for although immigration is discouraged there appear to be many more apparently young Chinese about than the statistics of arrivals would account for. There is nothing astonishing about this., if it is so. Australia is a most desirable land from the Asiatic point of view, and the Chinese are a very astute people, with a remarkable gift for providing ways and means. As some evasion of the restriction law probably must be always reckoned on, the result to be striven for as a matter of practical possibility is to minimise it, and the question now is whether that minimum is being exceeded, remarks the Sydney "Daily Telegraph." The experience of West Australia suggests that it is, since "a rough census" is reported to show an increase of 600 or 700 this year, while since the last census the Customs Office only accounts for 238, or about half the year's alleged increase. Whatever may prove to be the accuracy or otherwise of the figures, that is a matter well worth investigation—for one reason, because West Australia is one of the States that are dangerously close to the East; for another, because it and Queensland, which shares that liability with it

and the Northern Territory, are

about the only States whose Chinese population tends to increases.