CATCH THEM YOUNG

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 179, 17 April 1923, Page 11

CATCH THEM YOUNG

CHILD EMIGRATION SCHEME « FARM SCHOOL IN WEST AUSTRALIA

An immigration work that has met with the approval of the Commonwealth Government, and seems worthy of every encouragement, is that of the Child Emigration Society, of London. Its scheme is to select children whose parents’ cannot see properly to their upbringing —there are some 300,060 children helped or kept by charity or the ratepayers in England—and them out to- its farm school in West Australia. There they are trained m the work they will follow in after life, and at the age of 14 years they are launched on die world equipped, not only in ability to earn their living, but with a common outlook and sympathies with the people amongst whom they will spend the remainder of their lives. . , , From Aliss Al. Wall, who has been spending five weeks in the Dominion on a recuperative tour, a Dominion reporter obtained interesting details of the society’s excellent work. Aliss Wall is an active member of the society, who considers that the climate and possibilities of this Dominion would render Lt an excellent field for the extension of the society’s efforts. Founded by Kingsley Fairbridge, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, the soo.cty has been for ten years reclaiming, often from terrible circumstances, children who aro thereafter. brought up under the best of conditions at the farm at Pinjarra, some 25 miles from Perth. Alany of these are the children of ex-service men, who have died of injuries, or whose wives have left them. Tho area of the farm 3200 acres, and the children live m cottages, each one of which is under the care of a house mother. The children leave between tho ages of 14 and 16, and take positions with farmers, and their work has been so generally good that the Government has offered a grant ot £20.000 to be allocated to maintenance during the next five years. “Probably,” said Miss Wall, “this is the cheapest, as well as the best, of immigration schemes, as it avoids the mistakes bound to occur in all adult selections, and ensures that the immigrants shall be of use to their adopted country as soon as they are old enough to go to work. Taken before the deadly nature of their surroundings has had time to spoil them, the children are given every opportunity to disprove the theory that heredity is ineradicable. If environment is the sole factor in moulding the character, then tho Fairbridge farm should turn out admirable citizens. It has already done so to tha full satisfaction of tho Australian public and. the States. It has 75 children ab present, and is contemplating the emigration of another 130.” To tens ol thousands ol people Ih the Old Country life is a sordid thing, devoid of beauty, or even of interes*, and Miss AVall thinks the reason why there have been so many discontented immigrants to the Dominions in the past is that they’, were’ so poorly equipped to do country work. “The greater part of them cam© from the towns,” she said, “and they had never had the chance of learning anything useful to the country people in - the colonies. They liked company, and excitement, and were quite unfit to live lonely bush lives. It is rarely that the country folk at Home emigrate, and seme of the sown emigrants I have seen seemed quite helpless, even on shipboard, where practically everything wsr done for them. They had apparently nover seen a tug-of-war, and could not even pull on a rope. What use would they be here or in Australia? Our children are taught all about farm work, and when they leave they are as usclul as any Australian youth, so that they , are able to contribute to the production of their adopted land directly they leave us. As an Empirebuilder, the society is doing splendid work. We have at its head H.R.H. the Prince of AVales, and the general appreciation it is receiving will no doubt enable us to greatly enlarge its activities presently.”