HELPING IMMIGRANTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 September 1924, Page 7

HELPING IMMIGRANTS.

STOCK EXCHANGE TO COOK-

HOUSE.

Ne\t Zealand s safety depends upon numbers, and even if .the Dominion gets ten thousand immigrants every year as proposed by the .Government, it would take a hundred'"“Years to o-et another million people, Mi\ C. M. Luuer reminded members of the Auckland Rotary Club at their lunch last week. Mr. Luker was formerly on the London Stock Exchange, and being a keen yachtsman, naturally drifted into the naval part of the war, and saw some hazardous work in mine-sweeping, said the president (Mr. Kenneth Mackenize) when introducing the speaker. After the war, Mr Luker decided in the changed conditions that the best thing to do was to go overseas, and having met a lot of New Zealanders on the Panama Canal and other places, he chose New Zealand. He gave an amus_ ing description of the formulae he went through at the London office of the Dominion, and, as it turned out, “most of it was mere ‘tosh.’ ”

. When he came out to New Zealand four years ago he found no work ready for those to whom it had been promised, and the Commissioner of Crown Lands told him that an ex-service man, far from, having ‘ special privileges in regard •to taking up land, had no more advantage than a Chinaman. Mr. Luker then went up to the Waikato and got a job on a dairy farm, but it did not take him long to see that dairyfarming with the price at which land then was (and still is) was not the game it was supposed to be. He then tried his hand at a King Country sawmill, and for a time ran a cookhouse there. After that he driftec] down to the vSouth Island and got some experience on a sheep station. While he did not wish his remarks to be taken as a “grouch”—because he liked New Zealand very much 'indeed—he thought more could be done to help the immigrants. He was convinced from what he had seen of the immigrants in his wanderings in the baekblocks of New Zealand, that they were making heroic efforts' to ‘ ‘make good,” and the vast majority of them succeeded. It was not fair to judge the immigrants by the isolated cases that came_ before the notice of the police, but' as a matter of fact these were about the only ones the public heal'd of. The great majority of them were excellent citizens and were really doing their best. ' , . Mr. Luker, however, was strongly of opinion that the system of introducing immigrants .might be greatly ihiproved. After pointing out that even if we got in ten thousand a year it would be a hundred years before we added a million to the Dominion population, he said that better organisation was wanted in the New Zealand immigration system. First of all there should be more efficient men in the Old Country to give information as to what was before the people wishing to come out to New Zealand. Then on this side there might be a better , attitude to the new arrivals. When they landed on the wharf they were like‘a lot of .lost sheep. The Salvation Army did a lot for them, but could not cope with all. A few weeks ago, when two ships came in, the speaker was down at the wharf and found that people did not know where to go,, and if they got into lodging-houses they used up money that they could ill afford; As a solution, Mr. Luker suggested that depots might be tried, places where the new arrivals could live at a cheap rate until they found work to go to. Mr. Luker emphasised the fact that his criticisms were npt meant personally ; he was only concerned for the immigrants that were coming. He had met scores of new arrivals during bis experiences in the baekblocks, and he was convinced that some improvement in the matter , was needed.