ASSISTED IMMIGRANTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5623, 24 June 1905, Page 9

ASSISTED IMMIGRANTS.

SOME INTENDING COLONISTS WHO TURN BACK. It has been stated that there have lately been several ' instances where immigrants who had been assisted to the colony by the Government, have after a “look round,” decided to pay their full fare Homo again rather than take further chances in New Zealand. _ i The truth that this sort of thing is happening was shown this week, when three “assisted immigrants” inquired at a passenger booking office as to the lowest terms on which. they could get back to London by the Karamea (leaving on the 6th prox.), in which vessel they had arrived in the colony less than a month ago. Tho clerk questioned the men as to their reason for going back to England, and their reply was “ there is no work to be had here.” He pointed to a newspaper in which it said there was any amount of men wanted away back in the bush.

“ And what sort of life do you call that ?” the immigrant answered. “To fell bush in a roadless country in the middle of winter for bread and butter—that’s what it means.” One was asked had he not come out prepared to go on the land ? He said he had, but not on the kind of land that was offering—where there were no roads and not likely to bo for years to come. The general effect of .the remarks of these men' was that. the condition of things in the colony pictured to them in:,England had'been entirely misleading, and they would be glad to get Home again.’ One man—an unskilled labourer—informed, the passenger agent that he had a wife and six children in England, and had risked- much to come to New Zealand. It had hot proved a “land of promise.” to him, and he stoutly maintained that ordinary labour was easier to obtain where 1 he came from in the Old Country than ho had found it here, v

' The extent-to which such passengers aro assisted is that- in the second-class a man who can show £SO capital and £25 for each member of his family (if any), can get a. £3B berth for £3l. In the third-class (two-berth cabin) the passage money is reduced from £2l to £l6; and in the case of four-berth cabins from £l9 to £l4.

Mr James Mackay, of the labour Department, was waited l ,on yesterday with regard to this matter. He said there were every year hundreds of men coming into the colony of a class for whoni there was no room—men who had been employed perhaps half their lives in industries that we knew nothing of in this country. One man, on being asked what lie had done, said he was “ a maker of doll's eyes.” Now, as that was a thing New Zealand did not go in for, he could not be given employment, a® ho was not; the sort of man for the work the department might have been able to get him. It was explained that the particular men in question had been assisted in London by the Government to reach New Zealand. Mr Mackay said his experience of those men who had seen the Agent-General before * leaving England was that they were not the class to go back after being in the colony only a week or two.