EMIGRANTS WITH CHILDREN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9182, 5 April 1910, Page 5

EMIGRANTS WITH CHILDREN.

(By Electbio Telegbaph—Copybight. (Pee Press Association.) Received April 5, 8.5 a.m.

I LONDON, April 4. Mr T. H. Coghlan, writing to the Times, says some Australian employers .in the backbloeks are averse to married couples with children, not because they are heartless and unfeeling, but because they prefer that the children should remain in the thickly-populatcd areas where they arc able to obtain doctors, nursing and schooling. The controversy has arisen because certain emigration committees in England were sending unemployed mechanics and labourers with families. This was entirely contrary to the State Government policy. The States expect a man to send' for his family when j he has established himself in his new home.

The statement as to the difficulty that married immigrants with children experience in obtaining employment in Australia, is denied by the secretary of the Pastoralists' Union of New South Wales, in a letter sent to various Aus-

tralian papers. He writes: —"I have asked a number of members of this union what their practice is in regard to this matter, and have received 106 replies. These replies represent all classes of stations, from small to large, and cover all parts of the State, and they disclose the following facts: —On twenty-two stations no married men arc employed at the present time. The remaining eighty-four stations each employ from one to eighteen married men, whose wives and fami-

lies live with them on the stations. The total number of children in these families is 953, or an average of over three in each family. The impression that has got abroad regarding the non-employment of married men by station-owners is due to the fact that where 'married couples' (the term applied to cases in which both man and wife are engaged) are employed it is generally stipulated that they shall be without children. Where the man only is employed, however, the objection to children does not arise; indeed, many station-holders prefer employing men with families, because they are, as a rule, more reliable and permanent than single men."