UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 533, 15 January 1913, Page 6

UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

.— » CONDUCTED BY THE DOMINION EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. (The Easter Conference of the United Labour Party voted to make no paper its special organ,.but to provide official news and comments to any paper promising to regularly publish the same. The paper is not responsible for this column, and the party assumes no responsibility for any utterances of the paper except for its own official uterances in this department.)

IMMIGRATION, EDUCATION \AND MONOPOLY.

In the publication of the summary of the national d*bt of New Zealand and among the lines of expenditure there mentioned is found an item of £2,463,002 on account of immigration undertakings by the New Zealand Government.

JBut an item that is/ not .found in that connection is the further fact that after this vast expenditure in advertising and in subsidising undertakings for the purpose of increasing the population of New Zealand, New Zealand is now making a record of having people leave the colony as rapidly as they arrive.

A BAD, RECORD. It is not meant that the people return on the same boats on which they have arrived. A large portion of them are quite unable to do so, but they remain as employees in New Zealand only about long enough to get money enough to provide for the return journey, and those who come and become permanent residents in the country are nearly equalled by the na-tive-born sons of New Zealand, who, for the sake of better opportunities than their native land can offer, forsake the land of their birth. It is certainly an unfortunate record. The fight is now being made in London to increase immigratfbn to New Zeaalnd, and the fight is also being made in New Zealand by the same forces which are most anxious to increase immigration to make the conditions of labour less acceptable to Labour in New Zealand than they already are.

NOTHING TO OFFER. One reason why immigration has been so hard to increase, both in Australia and New Zealand is because the newcomer is offered his choice between submitting to conditions of emploment not altogether different from those from wnich he had sought to escape in the Home Country, or only baikblock opportunities to which he is unwilling to submit for the •* sake of any advantages which it is possible to offer him in that connection. There is another difficulty in this whole matter of immigration obtained by paid for advertising and subsidised agencies of the sort heretofore relied upon. And that is that only those who have been unable to secure the best opportunities at Home are induced to make the venture of the long journey and" the uncertainties involved in immigration. In eve*y European country those who are "well content" at Home are not strongly tempted to emigrate in order to take advantage of any industrial or commercial opportunities now offering in New Zealand, but the Unemployed, the assisted emigrant, the unfortunate, those who have fallen out with their employers, and especially those who havj fallen out with the police regulations, are strongly inclined to accept the offers which New Zealand advertising offers for another chance in "God's Own Country."

THE BEST ARE WANTED. Is it hot possible lo so. organise the industrial opportunities and the institutional life of New Zealand that the world will be induced to send to us not its unfortunates and its dependents and its derelicts, but, instead of these, its strongest, most ambitious, most worthy, especially among its young. New Zealand is not importing, and it is not Seeking to import any great reinforcement of the most skilled workers. The most pitiful thing about the life of the average New Zealahder is the very large proportion of those native born and who have grown up in this country, and have gone from the schools to children's jobs. Whoever begins life as a child worker is almost certain to end his life as an unskilled worker. The' most commendable thing in the life of New Zealand at this time is the splendid agitation which is going on among the progressive teachers of the Dominion in the effort to make the schools of the country of greater service in the point of skill as related to the industrial efficiency of the future. But for the present no other misfortune is greater in this country than its lack of skilled labour, and no other thing so marked as characteristic of the usual immigrant as fact that he is almost always an unskilled worker, and, further, that the effort on the part of the Government to increase immigration is directed almost exclusively to increasing the number of unskilled workers.

LAGK OF OPPORTUNITY r- NATIVE NEW ZEALANDERS.

But the mo°t progressive teachers in New Zealand are complaining that the the greatest difficulty in creating and maintaining interest in the development of industrial capacity is the lack of opportunity within New Zealand to find an outlet for making available this capacity when it has been achieved by the educational institutions in this country.

Over and over again the brightest wbmeri'tof New Zealand; born in New

Zealand., trained in New Zealand's schools,'depart from New Zealand in order to find a place where they cnt put to good use the powers obtsi.ed through the services of the New Zea land schools. ~

A QUESTION OF OPPORTUNI-

TIES—EDUCATION

And because this is so it at once becomes evident, both as to the 'matter of securing the most desirable emigrant and of retaining as citizens or this country the best of its nativeborn, that the problem of first importance in New Zealand ig to provide opportunities by which the best equipment, the best capacity and the best purposes cherished by the sons of New Zealand can be realised within New Zealand. , . If less than the amount expended in the Department of Emigration, with such unaatisafctory results, had been expended in opening up and equipping the educational institutions, for the direct use of the young workers of New Zealand, better results would have been attained.

INDUSTRY AND THE YOUNG. This, however, would not have solved the problem unless the natural resources had been unlocked and the grasp of private monopoly had been broken so that improved capacity could have found employment in this country. It is a misfortune for young men or women either to become factory hands during the very time when completing their maturity they are passing through the most critical years of all their lives. From fourteen to twenty years of age are the years during which the physical,, mental, and moral status of men and women is more seriously affected, fraught with greater dangers, faced wtih greater possibilities, than any like period in all the following years of all their lives. It is then that they need the nurture, the shelter, the instruction, the training, the care of the most skilled, the most trustworthy, and the most capable of all the race. But just when these young people need the playground, the gymnasium, the school, the means of helpful employment, the special care, the wise counsel, of an informed, disinterested and kindly purpose is when they are thrust into the world with little skill, with no experience, without guidance, and to take their chanceß with all the brutality and roguery of the industrial and commercial world. Less than the money already invested in immigration could have opened up and established an educational institution with establishments widely distributed throughout New Zealand with land, stock, tools gardens, farms, orchards, and factories in which the young could learn all the necessary lessons of productive capacity and at the same time wiht four hours a day of service provide for their own support and for the support of the institution which would have been provided for them.

SELF-SUPPORTING EDUCATION

Actual experience demonstrates that a young man or a young woman will learn faster, will achieve more froman educational point of view with fourj hours of interesting, hopeful productive labour in which they themselves are made the beneficiaries of their, own efforts than they can possibly l*»arn without such employments. Less than the amount already invested in trying to increase immigration could have established such an institution on such lines that by its own natural growth, through the wealth created by its own services, within the period of a very few years would have placed such educational opportunities within the reach of every young man and .woman in New Zealand. FREE THE SOIL-END PRIVATE MONOPOLY.

If at the same time the Government would do as it has the right lo do, in fact, would do what it has no moral right not to do, that is, fix a definite price on the unimproved value of every acre of land, city and country. Crown landa, private lands, endowments lands, and all the rest, that would fix the measure of private interests in unimproved land values andj that interest could be well admitted to belong to the people who now hold the legal titles covering these lands. On these unimproved land values so fixed, the necessary taxes for public purposes, both national and local, could be placed, and then there could be publicly appropriated all additional unimproved land values which should be added to the prices, so fixed for once and all. In that way every acre of land in New Zealand would be jmmediately so related to the workers of the world that they would be able to get out of employment in New Zealand all that their skill could put into industry in New Zealand.

A RECORD OF PROGRESS. Let the cables tell that story round the world and advertising for immigration would not be necessary. The popualtion of New Zealand would go up with leaps and bounds. Every private interest would be protected. Every public interest would be secure, and the most intelligent, most capable, most progressive workers of the world would come to New Zealand, hot to go away again, but to take advantage of her marvellous resources, of her splendid climate, of her progressive spirit.

The population would increase bo that instead of New Zealand being broken in purse and disappointed in spirit through the cost of a single warship and the maintenance of a military system which would be incapable of withstanding on its own account te smallest army or of opposing the smallest fleet of the smallest country on the face of the earth possessed of fleets and armies, would speedily become a great and powerful nation.