FEMALE EMIGRATION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 92, 27 April 1880, Page 2

FEMALE EMIGRATION.

(Home News 26th February.) The movement of emigration is always rather slack in the winter months, but the agents of the New Zealand Government are just sending off a shipload of nominated passengers from Plymouth. About one hundred of these are single women, drawn mostly from the ranks of our domestic servants, and intended, in the first instance, for the same walk of life in the colony. It appears nearly certain that the young women who have proceeded to New Zealand have sent back very flourishing accounts to their friends. Wages there for domestic servants are more than twice as high as with ns, and there is besides the chance —something like a certainty, indeed —of early marriage. The bait cannot but be tempting to the - fair sex in a country whore women, according to political economists, are redundant, and the number of spinsters and old maids greatly on the increase. The only question is, do these female emigrants marry well in New Zealand'? That marriage is a lottery is an adage as old as the hills. Husbands may be plentiful enough in the Antipodes, but are they always of ■ the right sort ? The offers made are not always such as an honest girl should accept; while the excellent parti, with his grant of land which he cultivates himself, may prove on a closer acquaintance a gentleman who purposes to turn his wife into a mere household drudge. Nevertheless, the stream of female emigrants sets steadily towards the Antipodes, and housewives at home complain more and more that the class from which domestic servants are drawn js rapidly thinning out.