THE SLUMP IN MIGRATION

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1928, Page 7

THE SLUMP IN MIGRATION

ASKINC EMPIRE QUESTIONS 196 QUESTIONS PUT BY CANADA. AUSTRALIA ACCEPTS 12 OUT OF 580 “When we remember the sparseness of the population of Canada and ef Australia, the reiterated need of these Dominions for white settlers for the balanced development of their enormous territories and resources, and their expressed preference for settlers from the Mother Country; and, on the other hand, the drain caused by unemployment upon the resources of our own country, resources which are required, among other things, to guarantee an adequate defence of the Empire—when we remember, too, the declarations of successive Imperial Conferences on the importance of migration, an importance deemed sufficient to justify the direct intervention of the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the Dominions and the passing of the Empire Settlement Act in 1922, we cannot but regard the present situation of migration as deeply disturbing.

“The majority of intending migrants do not demand or need elaborate supervision or help. They w-ant an opportunity to go overseas under conditions they are able to meet; they want to take their chance in countries which hold both risks and propsects of success; they want the knowledge that they will receive a welcome, not necessarily from Governments and organised bodies, but from the ordinary men and women among whom they will lead their lives in future.

“People cannot be brought to believe that the Dominions seriously want them and would welcome their arrival if they are confronted with what appears to be a formidable tangle of procedure involving expense, delay and’ often an embarrassing publicity about their intention to emigrate. ‘To be chased from pillar to post,’ or ‘to be made a fool of’ are two matters on which our people are sensitive; eVen if the charge be not true, the impression ought not to be given.” The question of Empire migration will have to be faced. The report of the Transference Board with its implied criticisms —as quoted above—brings the subject nearer to definite and practical discussion. It ie stated that British migration is decreasing, while both Canada and Australia are receiving increasing numbers from other European countries. As the Daily Telegraph says:— OPINION OF DAILY TELEGRAPH. “With all respect for the anxiety of Canada and Australia to prevent the growth of an unemployed problem' similar to our own, in their large towns, there is a strong feeling that they might open their doors wider to men and women of British nationality, especially in view of the large number of Continental emigrants which of late have found an entry. “Attention is drawn to the fact that last year 82,000 Continental Europeans settled in Canada and 22,000 in Australia. The proportion of non-Britieh to British emigrants admitted has been steadily increasing. “Why? We have seen no satisfactory answer, but it should in fairness be observed that in Australia the Prime Minister, Mr. Bruce, recently announced that the Government had decided definitely to restrict the numbers of foreign immigrants. British opinion does not advocate exclusiveness, but it would gladly see a freer flow of the splendid British material which adverse economic conditions have unfortunately made ‘surplus’ in their home land. “As to Canada, the immigrant figures for May showed 7,195 British, 3,096 from UJS.A., and 13.350 from other countries. We hope that this report of the Industrial Transference Board will not escape the notice of Dominion statesmen, and that the British Ministers primarily concerned will lose no opportunity of pressing it upon their earnest attention.” “‘I suggect that the problem of migration has never really been tackled,’ declared Mr. S. M. Bruce, the Australian Prime Minister, in a speech to the Sydney Chamber of Commerce. “ ‘At present Greet Britain is spending between £40,000,000 and £50,000,000 annually on doles for those for whom work cannot be found. Surely it would be worth while to spend what would be, by comparison, a small sum to promote development in the Dominions. “ “Great Britain’s difficulties to-day are largely due to her failure in the past to recognise that a permanent solution of her great problem of surplus population could only be achieved by development of the great potential resources of the Dominions, and to evolve a great echeme of Empire co-operation.’ ” A LABOUR- VIEW. “Not a week passes,” says the Daily Herald, “but we receive bitter letters of complaint about unemployment from people who have left this country for Australia cr Canada. ‘The number of unemployed in New South Wales,’ runs a letter received from an ex-Londoner only yesterday morniug, ‘is, in proportion to population, slightly more than in Great Britain.’ Our correspondent adds that in Sydney recently 500 men applied for an unskilled job, and a riot by the disappointed applicants had to be quelled by the police. “From Canada come similar stories of privation and disillusion, of great numbers of unemployed, of bread lines and soup kitchens in the big cities. “Under these conditions it is impera-

tive that the viewe of Canada and Australia should be taken into consideration. It would be no kindness to a Rhondda Valley miner to uproot him from his poverty-stricken home and send him to Canada and AustraEa to undergo similar or even worse privations in strange surroundings. “The Dominions have their own unemployment problems—far more serious than is generally realised here. It is only natural that they should be reluctant to add to the numbers of those seeking the already too-few jobs. Nor if they did throw their doors open would anything have been gained by taking men from the fob-queues of their home towns to etand in the bread queues of Winnipeg or Eydney. “We have got to face the facts. The open spaces of the Empire, the opportunity waiting overseas, the great areas won by our fathers for colonisation by our growing population are fine themes for flag-wagging after-dinner speeches. But when it comes down to brass tacke, ‘key just do not exist. “Great Britain, “mistress of the

greatest Empire the world has ever known,’ must, unless existing views and conditions undergo radical change, solve her own unemployment problem practi cally as if there were no Empire at all. That is tho fundamentally important fact which the report of the Industrial Transference Board has forced upon our attention.”

Sir Donald Maclean, in a recent speech, declared that “it was a remarkable fact that emigration from this country was at its lowest in times of bad trade and at its highest in times of good trade. One of the reasons was that men did not like to move across the seas without some money in reserve for contingencies, and now there was no margin.

“It would pay the country handsomely to capitalise the prospective dole over five years and give those who desired to emigrate every reasonable financial inducement to do so. If the home country found the money the Dominions ought to face some risks for the development of the countries.” “The texts of the Dominion regulations really speak for themselves,” asserts the Daily Chronicle. “The latest Canadian forms are the worst; but it is impossible not to see that the Australian also reflect the influence of men and parties who do not want immigrants. “One of the evil results of the system is that foreign immigrants slip through the meshes, which keep British out. Last year Canada and Australia took 104,600 non-British immigrants between them; while there is evidence that the number of Britons wishing to settle there vastly exceeds the number accepted for settlement.” “Wo see as a nation,” observes the Yorkshire Bost, “the urgent necessity to persuade and help the dispossessed workers and their families to migrate, and wo have hdd the avowed intention of all the Empire Governments to provide both persuasion and assistance, and yet we find a series of practical obstacles In the way of the intending migrant. “Intending migrants to Canada, for example, are called upon to answer no fewer than 196 questions, many of w-hich are irrelevant. Out of a party of 560 young men of Durham, all of good physique and in the tight decade of life, who proffered themselves recently as settlers for Australia only 12 were actually selected.” “DISAPPOINTINGLY SLOW.” “The ‘disapnointingly slow rate of settlement of British people’ is in part,” says the Morning Poet, “at least, due to the restrictions imposed on immigration by the Dominion of Canada and the State Governments of Australia. Upon one pretext or another, either by confining nomination to agricultural labour (as in Canada), or by physical standards so severe as to throw out a large proportion of applicants (as in Australia), the result is that British emigration to both Canada and Australia is decreasing, while foreign emigration to those countries is increasing.

’“The Dominions should shake themselves free from whatever influences are stopping the free flow of Imperial migration, which has done so much for them in the past and on which their future so largely depends. Let them not

deceive themselves by listening to ‘the silly parrot cry’ of British decadence. The nature of a people,’ says this report, ‘is not altered thus abruptly. What we have been for centuries and were in 1914, we are still. There is the same quality, the same endurance, the same cheerful adaptability, the same stirring in the blood to the call of adventure.’ ”