PROSPECTS TO IMMIGRANTS.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 68, 18 September 1894, Page 2

PROSPECTS TO IMMIGRANTS.

♦ TO THE EDITOB. r" ir— The experience of Mr Eobort Bridge as Btatod in your ieano of Saturday is only one of the many who have oome to tnia much vaunted land, attracted thereto by the false reports of your Government frauds and the shipping companies' agents, who are evidently paid to advertise your country in tho manner stated by Ml-. Bridge. If the ordinary individual obtains any advantage by means of false representations he is liable to bo criminally proseonted, and if convicted is provided with froe board and lodging in one of tho State prisons, as instance tho case of the brothers Eastwood in con. neotion with the fish cement fraud, which agitated the commercial portion of Wellington very recently. Does it not strike jou, Mr. Edito-, that the Government are doing the very thing in this misleading puffing of the colony that they usually punish their subjects for? These misrepresentations induce men every month to come to this land, and who, after vainly looking and asking for work, eventually become State paupers, some of them criminals, for poverty often begets crime. I have been in this country since March last, induced to come by the glowing accounts furnished the papers in the other colonies by the Government here and the steamer companies. I have lost all the money I brought (sufficient to keep me six months in Australia), and hare had to send for money to take me home again. I may say that I am an abstainer, and faavo not wasted my resources, but have used them to pay my way in seeking work. Up to the time I landed in this colony my wages were 9s and 10s per day, but I have been offered and accepted 10a per week and found, doing labouring work at that ; even then it was only temporary employment. I am a single man, and suppose the Premier and even Captain Kussell, not to mention more of your just'y celebrated boasters, consider that as such the proper thing to do is to starve or go to gaol, though why single men should receive the odium they do is what I cannot understand, considering the faot that they have absolutely no opportunity here of making a living for themselves, to say nothing of providing for a helpmeet. In conclusion, I would point out that the statistics of the Savings Banks together with the amount of New Zealand's debt in proportion to its population, stamp it not only the poorest colony, but that it is practically insolvent. I intend leaving as soon as possible, and shall übo every means in my power privately, and even on the public platform, to denounce and expose such Government frauds and shipping agents' boomer 3 already alluded to, and to tell to tbose interested what this colony really is, a land of paupers and pawnshops. Trusting I have not trespassed too long on your valuable space. I am, Ac, Walteb Harbison. 17th September.

The orchestra of the Musical Festival will meet this evening at the Dresden Room?. Members are requested to attend punctually.