" STRANDED."

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 14 July 1908, Page 2

" STRANDED."

PENNILESS COLONIALS IN LONDON.

New Zealand young men, bitten by the desire for sightseeing and adventure, sail out of Wellington and other seaports every month, working their passages to London, where everything is so bright and entrancing, by reason of distance. Unfortunately, the real 1 thing is far below the visionary picture, and the desire to get back to the old home is almost invariably experienced in a month or so. But the ready colonial method of spending sixpence on a telegram to "the old people," asking for the loan of money to tide over temporary shortness, is not an available remedy for the New Zealander far from home in London. It has been urged that the cases of 'stranded colonials in England ought t« be provided for by the New Zealand and Australian Governments. According to one who has experienced some hardships, and who has communicated some of his impressions to the Post, London is the last place in the world to be penniless in, but it is the place where most penniless colonials are to j be found. "Work^passage" berths, he j stated, are easily got on the outward run to England, but to get back was extremely difficult when the passage money is not in hand. Men by tho score haunted the docks every day, trying to secure free passages to Australia and New Zealand. One typical case he knew of was that of an Australian who returned to London expecting to earn money' by giving axeswinging "turns" in the music halls. He landed from the boat bearing nothing beyond a billy, two axes, and a sugar bag of knick-knacks, and after a few days these had done and he had become a haunter of outward "bound steamers, vainly seeking a free passage, and living by stress and semistarvation.

Another Wellington resident who returned this week told a Post representative that he went to England as a member of the Corinthic crew, but he thought a six days' stay in London insufficient for sight-seeing, and so he left her. After he had seen all he wished to, he decided to "find another ship," but the task he entered on lightly proved too hard for him, and eventually he became utterly pennilese and friendless. In this strait, he remembered that the New Zealand Government was granting assisted passages to desirable immigrants from England, and so he walked nine miles to the High Commissioner's office, in the hope that a New Zealander bred and born would be a desirable immigrant, and be helped, to find a job before the mast, if not granted a free passage, tie found, however, that Mr Reeves was too busy to> see him. A secretary received him kindly, but informed him that the first, proposal was impracticable, ' and that there was 1 no fund at the High Commissioner's office available for helping stranded New Zealanders. No doubt there would have to be careful administration of any such fund if it was formed, but it is argued by our informant that New Zealand would be well repaid if she provided such funds, since she would gain back her emigrated < sons soon after they had satisfied their desire for travel, and get them, back in a frame of mind that would be the best surety of them remaining 1 , in New Zealand. The Post's informant 'had a troublous time around the docks, but at last he was fortunate enough to be taken on as a passage worker on the s.s. Tomona. He arrived here on Monday, and on Wednesday he was in work in a city office. There were dozens ."trying their luck" at the time he got his berth on the Tomona, and amongst them were eigjht colonials. '■ Two of the desperate disappointed ones stowed themselves away in the cargo, but they were discovered soon after the vessel sailed, and she stopped at Graveserid and landed them again. . -"Stranded colonials are as plentiful in London as cobblestones," he concluded.