THE BOY IMMIGRANT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16492, 6 March 1914, Page 6

THE BOY IMMIGRANT.

The British boy born in the United Kingdom is being encouraged to regard himself as a person of importance. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are bidding for his patronage at tho present time and the competition amongst the dominions is making it increasingly easy for him to obtain a footing in one of the new lands. This tendency was mentioned by New Zealand’s High Commissioner tho other week when he was saying good-bye to fifty lads on board the steamer Suffolk, bound for New Zealand, and it has been illustrated strikingly by a sporting offer made to tho London “Daily Express” by Mr E. Rayment, the Assistant-Superintendent of Immigration for New South Wales and Victoria. The newspaper had published an article lamenting the waste of good boy material in “blind alley” employments, which turned the lads adrift to join tho army of unskilled labour just when they were approaching manhood. Mr Rayment wrote at once that Australia wanted those hoys and was prepared to pay a portion of their passage money and guarantee them work on the land immediately after their arrival. If the “ Daily Express ” could find among its readers five hundred beys between sixteen and twenty years of age, of good health and cnaracter, he said, he would undertake-to send them to Victoria or New South Wales and guarantee them farm employment at a minimum wage of ten shillings a week, with board and lodg-

ings. Experience of farm work was unnecessary, but the lads must be prepared to go upon the land. They would be required to pay not less than £3 in London, £1 to be returned to them when they reached Australian soil, and to undertake to refund £8 later by small monthly instalments. The newspaper proceeded without hesitation to find the five hundred boys and they will leave for Melbourne and Sydney this month. The idea that the boy • immigrant is the best immigrant is of recent inception, but it is being accepted widely already and apparently is being justified to a large extent by success. The supporters of the new plan are talking hopefully of the time when tho boys, grown to prosperous manhood in the dominions, will be looking to the Mother Country for wives from among the surplus million or so of British women.