The Hawera Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1925. TRAINING GIRL IMMIGRANTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 6 May 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1925. TRAINING GIRL IMMIGRANTS.

rtv-’rv evening hv 5 rVlnrk -n Hawcra, Mnnaia. Wcm.arihy, Okaiawa. Ell-ham, Mangatnki. Kaponga, Alton, Ilurlcyvillc, t’apa, Wavorle-y, Mnknin, Wliakamnra, fihanyfli. Mo re me re, Fraser Hoad, and Ararata.

When I sec the apj>alling condition in which so many hundreds of thousands of clean-cut. citizens of proud Britain live, and contrast the congestion and poverty here with the idleness of those vast open spaces, which in time to come are to house and support a multitude of the migrants of older civilisations, I -wonder why Britain dallies. With one bold move she could bring an adjustment which would effectively check the present terrible wastage of potential wealth —human beings and rich territories.

The cry is from an article contributed to The Spectator (London) by a ■Canadian Britisher, whose chief concern is that our sister Dominion is rapidly becoming saturated with people of other nations. In the agitation brought on by that realisation, the Canadian writer becomes unduly pessimistic, at least in so far as the general question @f Empire migration is concerned. The peopling of vast, open spaces cannot be accomplished all in a moment,’ and it is not quite fair tq accuse Britain of dalliance. The Home Government is co-operating whole-heartedly with the Dominions in their several immigration projects, and, taking the case of our own country particularly, the process of transferring population from the old land to the new is working smoothly and regularly. As a matter of fact those in our midst who profess the closest allegiance to the brotherhood of man ideal—in their own high-sounding words, “the economic and political federation of a Socialised) humanity ’ ’■— would hold the brake hard down, and deny entry to New Zealand to many of their less fortunate brothers and sisters now landing. We are getting the new settlers. What we have rather to con-

centrate on now is some, means of ensuring their success if only they themselves be made of the right stuff; and ' to this end it is desirable to aim at youth in our immigrants. Taken on the average, a newcomer’s chances of making good vary in inverse ratio to his age. The boy who reaches New Zealand at eighteen is more likely to find his feet than the man who is forty before he sees our country. Eor one thing, -the boy is usually quicker to learn; for another, he has as a rule only himself to think of and is so able to stand a few reverses, than which nothing teaches more surely. And, since what is true of boys should be equally true of girls, it cannot be other than for the good- of the country that the successful work now being accomplished at Eloek House in the training of British seamen’s boys as farmers is soon to have its counterpart in the training of fatherless British girls to take their places in the farm and station households of the Dominion. Scores of young women who have come out to New Zealand to take up domestic service have done well for themselves and are to-day happily placed in homes of their own; but the probability is that most of these, were they beginning over again, would welcome the chance of a feiv months or d year in an institution where they could gradually get into the Colonial way of doing things while still enjoying the companionship of other girls from Home. Not all farm kitchens are ns efficient as they might be, and it would often bow to a girl’s own advantage to know that her initial training was the best, to know that she would have nothing to unlearn in future positions. The scheme which the Flock House trustees have. in. mind has everything to commend it; the one weakness is that it will touch only a very small percentage of, our young women immigrants. But it may easily become the beginning of a much bigger plau, which shall aim at a short period of specialised home training’ for every domestic immigrant. It is acknowledged that the liome science instruction given in our primary and secondary schools, and in our University, is meeting a very definite need. If we are doing so much for our New Zealand-born girls, it is only fair that we should do something for those from our common Homeland who are coming in this later generation to help carry on the work of colonisation, which our mothers and grandmothers began. Once here, they are New Zealanders with us.