NEW SCHEME OF BOY MIGRATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17833, 29 April 1926, Page 9

NEW SCHEME OF BOY MIGRATION.

PROPOSALS OUTLINED BY ENGLISH VISITOR.

A keen worker in the interests of boy migration from the Old Country, Mr Samuel Barker, of Bournemouth, England, who is at present on a visit to New Zealand, outlined in conversation? with a “Star” reporter this morning- a new scheme for giving boys in English “ Home Office ” or industrial schools the opportunity of emigrating to the dominions and starting life anew as settlers. Mr Barker until about eighteen months ago was general manager of the Sea Insurance Company. His health then broke down, but later was restored, mainly, he says, as a result of the advice and help he received from Mr F. A. Hornibrook, a former resident of Christchurch. Since his retirement Mr Barker has thrown himself enthusiastically into the work of the People’s League of Health, an organisation that has been doing much useful work in bringing health matters before the public. Some time ago the league decided to open a school for the special training of boys whose parents belong to the labouring classes in the large cities. At the request of the league he had purchased a property in Somerset, which was particularly suitable for the purpose, but the matter‘was not yet finally settled. The position in regard to the “ Home Office ” boys, said Mr Barker, was that they were taken at ages between six and twelve years and committed to those schools to save them from their parents, who could not, or would not, look after them. They were not “convicted” of any crime, but in their own interests and in the interests of the country and Empire to which they belong have been committed to the care of the voluntary committees who conduct these schools, until the age of sixteen, after which the committees are responsible for finding them employment, and watch over them for another two years until the boys are eighteen years of age. Many of the boys, Mr Barker declared, are peculiarly suitable for migration at eighteen years of age, if not at the earlier age of sixteen, when they leave the school. While in Australia Air Barker brought this suggested field of immigration to the notice of the Commonwealth authorities, as he was of opinion that Australia offered better scope for boy immigrants than the other parts of the Empire. He is now looking into the possibilities of that class of immigration in New Zealand. Because they are chred for and brought up in Home Office schools (under conditions infinitely superior to the conditions outside, where other children are brought up), there boys, said Mr Barker, were said to be unsuitable. But if they were allowed to drift for two or three years, foten in unsatisfactory employment, losing at any rate some of the good they bad gained at school, there was then no difficulty in having them passed as “fit.” He believed that it was in the dominions’ own interests to accept these boys as immigrants fresh from the schools. Mr Barker said that there was a feeling that something should also be done for the b-oys of the British labouring classes, who could not at present obtain the privileges offered by the Home Office schools. On his return to England he intended to establish an agricultural boarding school for the children of the labouring classes. The scheme, he believed, was capable of extension, and much good should re suit.