CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 65, 10 December 1907, Page 4

CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

Yesterday we printed another of the recent interesting series of cable messages reporting the wholesale emigration from America of aliens and iudigent white labourers. . During November it was announced that Europe was about to experience an inundation of unemployed from America, and the prediction was rapidly followed up by a report that the drift of penniless unemployed northwards across the Canadian border had become " serious." Almost simultaneously the attention of England was called to the phenomenon by the discovery tliat steerage passengers from Canada and the United States were arriving in record numbers. Italy, we were' informed last week, was beginning to feel the pinch, and it was expected that there would be 300,000 extra unemployed in Italy during the winter. iN T ot until yesterday,, however, was the information sufficiently explicit to enable us thoroughly to realise the alarming volume of the reflux of population. Two hundred thousand workers, it was said, had returned to Europe from the United States, and nearly 100,000 artisans who had intended to emigrate to America had decided to remain in Europe. It has for long been the policy of the Governments , of southern and eastern Europe to do what they can to aid the emigration of the lower classes of their people, and America has, for many years, been receiving thousands of immigrants i'rom Europe every week. The present reflux means, therefore, that congested Europe is not only deprived of the dumping ground that it requires for its economic health, but is actually being made a dumping ground itself. What this means to Europe can be understood from the fact that Italy alone, in the thirteen years ending with the year 1905, sent America more than 1,500,000 immigrants. The natural inference from the phenomenon is that America is an almost saturated sponge, ready to exude a surplus population at the slightest squeeze; and, ! if careful records are kept, it may be possible to obtain some useful contributions to the general problem of " population exchange." To Australasia, the interest of Europe's embarrassment lies in. the fact that in New Zealand, but itf an enormously greater degree in Australia, there is a demand for suitable immigrants. Australia, awaking to the urgent need for populating the Northern Territory, may be relied upon to see whether she cannot relieve Italy of the burden of her unemployed. But the Agent-General for New Zealand should not overlook the opportunities which the exodus from America affords for the selection of useful labourers, for this country. So far we have found no difficulty in absorbing_ the immigrants who arrive in the direct liners: on the contrary, there is a dearth, not alone of skilled labour, but of unskilled labour as well. • One point in connection with the presont disturbance of America's labour market is worth emphasising now for remembrance when there is talk of immigration in the future. The position has its origin in the disturbance of

capital by the financial stringency of the past month or two. "When capital is alarmed, or injured, or crippled from, any cause, it is the worker who feels the pinch. Any discouragement of capital must restrict industrial enterprise, and breed the disease of " unemployment." Capital has already been sufficiently handicapped in this country, and any further burdens upon it will make impossible, the absorption of the population that the country requires for the full exploitation of its resources.