NEW "AUSTRALIANS"

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 53, 5 March 1925, Page 9

NEW "AUSTRALIANS"

MEDITERRANEAN INFLUX

DIFFICULT PROBLEM

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 24th February. What is colloquially called "Our Dago Problem" has been receiving much official attention lately. ■

The other day two foreign ships passed each other in Sydney Harbour. On the French ship, outward bound, were 40 miserable Greeks and Albanians, sprawling on the forward hatches. Most of them had been rejected on various grounds, and forbidden to enter the Commonwealth, and were being conveyed home again by a reluctant shipping company j while ten. or so. were returning of their own accord because the jobs they had so fondly hoped for were not to be found. The lower-rails of the incoming steamer, an Italian, were lined with tho hungry, eager faces of some, hundreds of Italians, Slavs, and Greeks—a mixture of Mediterranean peoples. The rude Australian wharties who waited for the steamer to berth started up. malignantly at the mass of swarthy Southerners; and spat venomously, and told each other what-they-thought of the""Dagoes." ' V . None fears the Mediterranean iimux more than the wharf labourers and-port workers generally. These men, 1 through.' their powerful unions, have.a..stranglehold,.on our maritime industries. Good Australians have been heard, tp-pray that sufficient "Dagoes" will arrive to swamp the.arrogant unions and drive the wharfies and seamen from the... positions whence they had been bush-ranging tbp whole community for years past. - Nobody welcomes the poor "Dagoes"—but in sucli circumstances they .would not be an unmixed evil;

In the "five mouths, from Ist July to 50th November last, Australia received 1932 Italians, 924 Greeks, 693 Ju o-Slavs 106 Albanians, 107 Serbs, 221 and 230 Finns. The total of 4213 means they were coming in at the rate of 10 000 a year. But since 30th November the arrivals have increased by perhaps 30 per

Tho Italians and Slavs are more welcome than the Greeks. The former go right out into the open places and do the labouring work of pioneering The Greeks crowd into the cities, and start petty trading. They have almost completely captured the fruit and vegetable retail trade and the very cheap" restaurants. They work any hours, and live on next to nothing. Australians halo them. .■■■"■

These Mediterranean peoples, .steadily crowding m, are forming little communities of their own in all the bigger towns. Ihere is now a definite Serb quarter in Newcastle, for instance, and investigators there the other day found a proportion of them workless and starving Xhe Commonwealth Government, alarmed at last, has announced new regulations, which should limit the influx though it cannot be stopped. The Italian Government has agreed not to let any of its subjects leave for this country unless they have £40 ,and have been nominated by friends here.' The British consuls in the other Mediterranean countries have, been asked to co-ooerate and refuse passport visas to persons headed tor Australia if they exceed 100' per .month. But it k flo t going to be easy to stop the stream^The poor wretches have to go somewhere out of their over<T° w<*e<* countries, and with America fefttotW 16 nOtniUCh mpty earth