“TAKING the CREAM”

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11664, 31 October 1923, Page 4

“TAKING the CREAM”

j Dominion’s Immigration Demands |

AN ENGLISH VIEW OF THE POSITION

In connection with the various iinmicjrntion schemes of the Commonwealth nml oversea dominions an interesting article, extracts from which will he found below, appeared in a recent issue ch the Sunday "Pictorial.’

Scarcely any mention of New Zealand is made in the article, presumably for the reason that the number being absorbed is not of such dimensions as to cause any' perturbation at Home.

But the presence of the Hon. Mr Massey at the Imperial and Economic Conference, and the fact that he is sure to be consulted by the British authorities as to New Zealand’s attitude on "the question, and its capacity to absorb thousands of newcomers, will make the article all the more interesting.

Mr Bruce, the Australian Premier, will shortly come to this country to take part in the Imperial Conference, and assuredly there is no subject of greater importance than the export and import of surplus population. To do them .justice, the colonies and dominions, chiefly Canada and Australia, are perfectly explicit in the statement of their views. ‘‘Give us of your best," they exclaim to the Mother Country. ‘‘Send us none but your best; we don’t want your wastrels and dole-receivers, and wo are not quite sure that we want your public school and university man. ’ This is all very well, but what is to become of the Mother Country? Is she to be left with the industrial residuum of Bermondsey and Poplar? An example of what is going on at present may be seen on the wheat plains of Canada. Canada this summer has had a bumper harvest, almost twice as big ns that- of lust year. Canada has made urgent requests to the Mother Country for temporary har-.-etderfi, and 1 read some time ago that 11,000 men were provided with cheap transportation to the Dominion. Not ill of these men, of course, wore skilled agricultural labourers, and some were manifestly unfitted for the work, which s severe, before they started. SKILLED MEN GOING.

But when America and the dominions >egin to import skilled artisans, scientific experts, and what are generally called the professional classes, the outlook is Berious, if not dangerous for the Old Country. The continued emigration of skilled engineers to America md South Africa and the dominions cannot but have a bad effect on the future of our engineering trade, as, indeed, is admitted by the executive of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. American big business, which ever since 1907 has been continuously booming, spares neither money nor effort to secure the most highlyskilled British labour. Some weeks ago I pointed out in these columns that the American shipping companies did not hesitate to seduce English seamen from their service tinder the British flag by offering them much higher wages. The same course is now being pursued with regard to skilled engineers. Who is to blame? And how can this be stopped?

The young engineer in this country, looking around upon the failure of our export trade and the crushing taxation to which he is subject, sees no immediate prospect for the betterment of himself and his family. If he remains at home he must either be un employed and live on doles of one kind or another, or, if he is a good man and hates doles and unemployment, he will be forced to take up work of a neavy and manual character unsiiited to his training. CANADA’S INDUCEMENTS.

The attitude of the big Canadian farmers, the Press, and the Provincial Legislatures ia natural, if not very comforting, to us. The Canadians are very desirous of picking out thousands of the very best harvesters and persuading them to settle in the dominions. In order to retain the cream of these labourers they are being offered inducements to settle in the shape of territorial rewards—in other words, free grants of land for farming. The unfit —namely, those who are mentally or physically unsuited for colonial work—axe quickly being sent home by the colonial authorities. But there is a more serious aspect of this question than that of the farm labourer. It may be said that England is not really a wheat-producing country, and that shortly she may even cease to produce the small amount that ehe does now.

There would be no great danger in this as long as we can command the seas; for we shall always bo able to import as much corn as we want from our Imperial possessions, bearing in mind that probably in a few years the United States will cease to export corn. We may/ therefore, regard without panic the stealing by Canada of the cream of our agricultural population, more particularly as there is a tendency at present for the farm hand to desert the countryside for tho large towns.

No lees an authority than Sir Allan Smith has expressed his fear that a highly-skilled artisan, by being driven to do work of an unskilled kind, will lose that suppleness of finger and delicacy’ of touch necessary for the manipulation of intricate machinery.

If you put a tool maker to work as a navvy you will probably gget bad roadcs and lose a finished craftsman. What wonder, then, if the most adventurous and intelligent of our young skilled workmen are slipping away across the Atlantic to the new countries of the western world? There is. one way to retain the fin*; flower of our industrial population —namely, to raise their wages, which, unfortunately, the state of business both in England and on the European Continent makes impossible. Nor does the draining of our best sons by the dominions and America stop at* the manual workers.

THE PROFESSIONAL CLASSES. What about the professional classes? What is the immediate outlook for the young doctor, tho briefless barrister, tho chemist, the electrician? The burdens imposed by Imperial taxation and local rates are so crushing as either to prevent young men and’ women of the best class from marrying, or, if they have already taken this stem to make their lives sc worrying that~they inevitably cast longing eyes to other countries.

Before the war a young married couple with a brace of children might have lived comfortably on an income of £7OO to £IOOO a year. To-dav, if lhe v are to educate'' their boys*ond girls in the same schools as they themselves were brought up in, thev will require at least double that income.

Nothing is more astonishing at the present tame than the large proportion of their income which parents of this class devote to the schooling of their children. It appears, that a boy or girl to-day cannot be educated at a good school for less than £2OO a year. If a young professional man has three or four of these young cherubs to pay for. how can he make two ends meetj particularly as the prices of provisions keep on rising with rents and rates and the cost of travelling? The bravest and cleverest of our upper-middle and middle classes will certainly emigrate, and seek in Vancouver or Rhodesia or Now South Wales or (possibly) the Argentine, a new career for themselves and their sons. THE SCUM OF EUROPE.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries England sent her worst to the colonics. After many generations their descendants have returned to us in the shape of the .splendid young soldiers who fought in Flanders and at Gallipoli. To-daj r wc are being asked, to send our best, with the certain result that in a few generations the dominions will absorb the metropolis. What is to happen to those who re main behind because they cannot’ or will not leave the Old Country ? There :s a steady influx of poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, the scum and offscouring* of a ruined world. If this goes on unchecked, if refugees from Russia, the Baltic provinces, Poland, Jugoslavia, and Greece are. allowed to make their home in London, the capital of tho British Empire will soon become what Juvenal called Rome; “The great sewer of the world.” The United States and Canada take very good car© nowadays not to admit immigrants p of this description; while the Australian Governments (mistakenly, t?o I think) persistently refuse to admit coloured labour, either from the Pacific Islands or from China.

Besides these picturesque ingredient's in the population of the East End, we have our own dole-receivers and unemployablea to deal with. The Government boasts that 400 millions have been spent under the Unemployment Insurance Act, and this does not include the borrowings to pay the doles out of the rates. Most of these dole-takers have dropped out of the unions, so the large decline in the membership of the trade unions proves. SAPPING CHARACTER. Unfortunately, the writings of Dean Inge and other first-class mind© upon the subject- of birth control do not reach tho now proletariat, who breed in the inverse ratio of the classes above thorn. AVhat is likely to be tho character of children who see their parents living exultantly in idleness supported by doles drawn from their neighbours’ pockets? Unless the Government and Parliament make some vigorous effort to control emigration, and to replace the dole by some form of employment, however useless it may appear nfc the moment, there seems every proenect of the best classes being submerged by tho worst.