IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12854, 1 May 1905, Page 4

IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS.

It is to be hoped that General Root h, of lie Salvation Arm.v, v ill receive every Encouragement from this, colony if he should propound while here any safe and reasonable immigration proposal. The " scum" of a nation, provided it has health and strength, has always done splendid work when organised into the. fighting line; and there is equal reason to suppose that what we commonly regard as tliQ "drygs"- ui a-juatiun—

also provided it has health and strengthwill do good work industrially if properly organised and influenced. No country can take the " ineffectivcs" from another country, least of all a new colony which is still breaking in the wilderness and slowly accumulating the capital for the intensive use of land and the extensive use of. machinery. Nor can one country take from another immigrants who may lower its moral and social standards or contaminate its racial purity. But if the Salvation Army, with its really remarkable social organisation, can sift out of the British towns those for whom, there is no room at Home, but for whom there is a place and a hope in our colonial life, it is to our national advantage that they should be sent here and introduced to our industrial life in such a manner as would not disturb the relations of employers and employed. Nations cannot establish a permanent monopoly of land unless they occupy^ and use it to the fullest. Unless British settlers fully occupy this colony, populating it with millions whe< now are hundreds of thousands, and leaving no unused country to attract the eyes of land-hungry men, it will lie quite impossible to avoid the ultimate inroad of Asiatics. Unless we fill it with our own countrymen it will be filled by aliens, an always present danger that should incline us very favourably towards the emigration system being established in the United Kingdom by General Booth.