METHODIST MIGRANTS.

Otago Witness, Volume 1851, Issue 3809, 15 March 1927, Page 72

METHODIST MIGRANTS.

MOVE FOR ENCOURAGEMENT. AUCKLAND, March 8. An outspoken criticism of the disgraceful treatment received by an immigrant lad in a North Auckland district was made by the Rev. L. B. Dalby, of the Pitt Street Church, at the New Zealand Methodist Conference to-day. He said he had befriended one lad of 16 years who came to him practically starving. He fed him and kept him for a week. 'The boy was alive with vermin, and had been treated very shabbily. He had been obliged to sleep in a shed that was scarcely fit for a dog. Yet this lad was a fine stamp of boy—“a nice Methodist boy,” Mr Dalby said. The lad had been sent out from the Old Land as an experienced milker, yet he did not know one end of a cow from the other, never having been on a farm. Mr Dalby said he knew of other cases in which boys from England had been treated shockingly, and two or three men who had been miners accustomed to the discomfort of wet mines in the Old Country had complained of harsh treatment on New Zealand farms, where they had worked from 4 a.m. till 8 p.m. Surely something should lie done to sec that young fellows who came out here were treated in a proper manner. He wished to protest as an Englishman against such treatment being meted out to lads from the Old Country. Mr P. W. Sharpe (Canterbury) complained that the conditions were disgraceful in the third-class cabins of the ships. He had recently spent 15 months in England, where 6,000,000 persons were on the verge of starvation. He believed that if the Old Country would wake up anl work the land as was done in Denmark there would be no unemployment in England.

The remarks of Mr Dalby were strongly resented by Mr G. W. Horn, a Te Arolia farmer, who defended New Zealanders from the charges. He admitted that the hours of labour were long. He and his own sons had to work from 4 o’clock in the morning till 8 in the evening in order to make the farm pay, and he doubted the statement that lads from the Old Land were generally not well treated.

The discussion was continued by the Rev. E. S. Emmett, a recent arrival from England, who endorsed what Mr Dalby had said as to the shocking treatment of some of the boys on farms. The conference carried a resolution which stated that whilst recognising the fact that the Government was slowing down its immigration activites in consequence of unemployment in New Zealand, it was of opinion that so long as immigration continued the Methodist Church might be greatly strengthened by securing the nomination of suitable Methodist immigrants in order to encourage such immigrants, the conference urged quarterly meetings to appoint a representative to canvass the possibilities of employment among business men and employers with a view to the nomination of Methodists from the Old Laud to fill the vacancies.