INDISCRIMINATE IMMIGRATION.

NZ Truth, Issue 59, 4 August 1906, Page 4

INDISCRIMINATE IMMIGRATION.

There is a trite saying "Better late ! ;than never," and another and' far more sensible one, "Better never late." Apparently the Auckland Trades and Labor Council works on the principal of the former, if its action with regard to indiscriminate immigration be any criterion of its usual methods. Certain it is that the Council has been grossly remiss m its dilatory handling of this matter. Had it but been wide awake and possessed of a 'keen scent f^r •.self-ad-vertisement it would have filtered a

wr athful .protest immediately the wholesale importation of navvies from "merry" Hingland, to work on the Main Trunk line, was mooted. But the A.T. and L.C. made no sign at the/time and the scandalously sordid sclfc me of bringing men out on the old, lying pretence of finding them -m constant work at eight bob a nob per diem was proceeded with. Apparently it was not until the' crying scandal was brought under their very poses, by the landing of a hundred or irtyo navvies from the Corinthic a vteek or two ago, that the members £f this lamentably lackadaisical labor party roused themselves from their state of somnolence and started to my things. And then all that they said m^ght just as well have Treen left linsaod, for by that time the Hon. HyphenatVd Jones, Prime Minister, pro tern, ftad officially announced that the immigration of men had been suspended. Just to what extent the mischief brought about by the remissness of the Auckland Council, m common with other labor organisations- 1 throughout the colony, will spread will be fully exemplified within the nest few months. Already there are abundant signs of the evil, for within the last few days the labor office has been kept busily engaged answering chiefly m the negative the supplications and entreaties of disappointed and penniless English new chums for work. How diabolically these men have been deceived by golden promises made to them at the High Commissioner's office m London, may be gauged by the recent shocking affair at Ponsonby, where one of the new arrivals, disheartened and driven to desperation by abortive attempts to get the wherewithal to live, attempted suicide. Verily is the negligence and stupidity of the Auckland councillors for labor's rights coming home to roost. ♦ »■'•■■ But, if the Auckland Trades Council has been neglectful m the past, it can mend ita ways m the future, and aa opening presents itself of which, it is to be hoped, for its own credit's sake, it will take the fullest advantage. In making; his official announcement at Christchurph last week regarding the nayvies from England, the Premier said that, ■"m view of the fact that the navvies from England were arriving m the winter, the worst part of the year from the industrial standpoint, the Government had decided early m June to suspend the system. The High Commissioner m London had therefore been instructed to send no more men, pending further instructions:" Apparently, then, v;c are to surmise from this that the damnably disastrous ■ importing •of broken-down toffs, bleary-eyed beerchewers < and others of their kidney, who have m the past been dumped on to us as men "specially suitable" for navvying, -by the high-falutin' High Commissioner, is only suspended for a time, to be. resumed hereafter when it shall so please the powers that be. It is a chance for the Auckland Trades and Labor Council of whioh we 'hope to see the. fullest advantage taken. The 4 Government must be told emphatically that this diirty dumping of England's unwanted wasters must stop, once and for all time. The game has been played too long already, and New Zealand will suffer m consequenice by increased poverty and crime — the latter inevitably, for some of these "navvies" \ are absolutely brutal miscreants. The glaring farce of sending men on to the Main Trunk Railway where they cannot earn enough, . owing to the wet weather, and the mismeasurement of what work they are able to do by fawning overseers, to keep body and soul together, ,is too nauseous to dwell on. However necessary the Main Trunk Line's completion is, until the Government makes it possible for a man to earn there what is so plausibly and persistently offered him before he tackles the job, the line must take its chance. What' 1 it behoves the Trades and Labor Council to do, first and foremost, is to protect with all its might, the laboring men. . And the Trades and Labor Council, must know, as nearly everybody else knows, that there are thousands of men who would, under fair conditions, be only too p;lad to, finish the Main Trunk Line, who are now humping their swags throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand. If the Auckland Council failed lamentably m not protesting m vehement fashion against the importation of unwanted would-be workers firom England, under the protecting wine; of Reeves, it can still justify its existence by insisting that the rotten business must not be suspended ; bitf that it must be abolished by the Government, absolutely.