"GENERAL" BOOTH'S IMMIGRATION SCHEME.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1846, 11 November 1891, Page 5

" GENERAL " BOOTH'S IMMIGRATION SCHEME.

The " General," on being interviewed by a representative from the Dunedin ' Evening Star,' gave the following information with regard to his immigration scheme. The conversation was in effect aa follows :—

You have now, sir, had an opportunity of expounding your immigration scheme in various parts of the colony. Will you tell me how it has been received ?

. Yes; I shall be at it to-night here aa I have been at it everywhere else in the colonies — the Australasian colonies, as you call them ; and it has been received with the greatest interest and strong approval by the people to whom I have had the opportunity of speaking. There has been dissent expressed by the Labor party — by those whom I should think have rarely or never ' heard me, and do not understand how what I propose will affect them. I have held meetings— select meetings — in almost every city; I have been in, at which I have endeavored to gather together the leaders of philanthropic movements, both male and female, rich and poor, and at the close of my addresses I have given opportunity of questions being asked. In nearly every case I think I have satisfied my examiners. Still, aa I have said, there is no disguising the fact that I have met with very strong prejudice on the part of the working class, who think I am going to introduce into the cities competitors with them in the labor maiket.

You are speaking, I presume, not of opposition from any particular body of men ? Yes. There is nothing voiced from any organisation —no opposition absolutely expressed excepting from separate men. Foe example, I believe they had a meeting at Newcastle, in New South Wales, to protest against the scheme, and only 100 or so were present. In Sydney it was said by some that I was in conspiracy with capitalists to introduce more labor, or in order to enable ,them to reduce wages. Did you disabuse them of that idea ? I endeavored to do so. At a meeting at which Sir Henry Parkes was in the chair I made observations on the subject which I thought necessary ; and I saw one or two of their leading men at the close of the meeting, and they seemed to be taken aback by my explanation. I could not wait to see what effect the explanation had on others, for I had to leave that night for New Zealand.

Have any offers of land been made to you ? Yes; I have had offers in the other colonies, and overtures for the taking over of 2,500 acres have been made by a gentleman in this colony — in Auckland ; and also I have had communications with the authorities here, who would be willing, I think, to assist me so far aB the present land laws will allow, on the lines of the village settlement clauses. lam of course referring to the Government. They would, I believe, be willing to let me have what they think would be a sufficient portion of land. Lord Onslow, the Governor, thinks well of the scheme, and would like to see the experiment tried in the colony. I had an interview with him this morning, and he moved a vote of -thanks at the meeting on Saturday night. I was agreeably surprised at His Excellency's familiarity with the land question and with his knowledge of village settlements.

You think, from what you have seen, that the scheme would succeed in New Zealand ?

Of course it would succeed. I should think that New Zealand would be as favorable a colony for it as any I have seen. There is only one objection, that, namely, of distance, in which respect the Cape has an advantage. That is the only difficulty I now foresee in the~ working of the scheme — in the beginning of it — if it is to be worked out to any extent on any scale : the cost of transit. '< You take it, then, that New Zealand is as suitable a place for the scheme as the Cape or Australia ?

I think that.New Zealand is in the front ; Ido not say before. Queensland is next in opportunity to New Zealand. What I mean is that Queensland made me a most generous offer— her Government did, straight away — and would do for me all that I could desire ; and It is now as between Queensland and New Zealand and the Cape. Of course I have not been to Tasmania.. If it 'comes to be a settled thing that farms are to be started in this colony, which district would probably be selected to make a start ?

Ido not know. That is one of my next points. Of course, if I decide for New Zealand I shall have to see which place will be the most suitable. This part of the country seems to be pretty well all taken np and occupied after a fashion, though it is not what I should call occupation. I have not seen fifty acres of what I call cultivated land all the way down the line. Is it corrept to assume that font emigrants would be in some way prepared, before leaving England, for colonial country life?

Yes, so far as we can. But the great mass of the people I should send here want no fitting. They have bone and sinew, and can handle spade and pick, and in a day or i two they wonld get into the axe business. We have no trees on which they can get { practice in cutting down. The people brought here would first have to work to pay the coßt of their passages ? Yes ; a man would be supposed to defray the entire cost of all we do for him and all we give to him, and then he would have to pay us a rental. He wonld not proceed on to acquiring a freehold? Not at the outset. He would pay us a rental, and the cost of his cottage and his furniture, bis cow and his pig, and the cost of planting his garden; and all the improvements would become his own property, fle would be a tenant — a leaseholder of the soil. Somewhat on the lines of the perpetual lease system I should think so, but I have not had time to study your systems. I may remark, however, that I have seen Mr Ballance, who has, and he says that he would like to see the scheme tried. Then, as a man paid his money back and paid his rental for the land, the money would all go to bring out others who are in the same circumstances as he was in the Old Country. There would be no personal profit from the gains of the community. As the land increased in value and the rental improved the proceeds would go into a common fund for bringing other destitute people from misery into the possibility of comfort. Would you prefer your settlements to b* near towns or away back ?

I should prefer that they were in a licensing circle, aB I may call it, so that by our vote we could keep the public-house away from our gates. Otherwise, of course, I should like to be as near towns as possible, because of having a near market for the produce. While we should rely very largely on having a local consumption for our produce, there would be an overplus to supply the needs of others. A central store would act as a pivot of trade to each community of workers,' buying the produce and selling it again on the best terms ; collecting batter, bacon, poultry, and what- not in small quantities from the cottages, and selling in the bulk, and giving poor people the advantage of cheap food. Is it only the English poor who would be entitled to participate, or would you provide for others, including people already in the colonies T

We should be prepared at once to extend to New Zealandera the same facilities that we are seeking to obtain for people in the Old Country. That is to say, we should at once open in each of the principal cities a depot to receive any people in needy oironm■tancea and any willing to work and obey orders. We should talte the prisoners ps they come from your gaol gates, and the harlots from your streets, so far as we could. That opens the question aB to the class of people to be brought to the country. Would criminals be excluded, or would they be dealt with separately ?

No ; I would not exclude— l would not absolutely exclude a man because he had been a criminal. I certainly would engage that no man would be sent that we did not; believe would not only be honest, but truthful, and sober, and industrious. But Ido not agree with those who say that because a man has made a slip in the past he should not have another chance to become a better sort of man. We are apt to be unjust in oar judgment in these matters. The man who sells a poor woman up is a big scoundrel, and yet he passes free ; while the man who steals his neighbor's money when his wife is starving is called a criminal. A great deal of this prejudice proceeds from the false assumption that the criminal instinct is hereditary. Much of what id called crime, and eventually becomes crime, ia in the first place the outcome of misdirected acquisitiveness— a faculty that may be brought into service for good. I am acquisitive myself — I take pleasure in acquiring — but not in acquiring dishonestly nor for my own selfish ends. I shall show in Dnnedin that the out-and-out criminal portion of a community is such a small section ,of the people that no one need be frightened of it.

Bat is this movement really necessary ? Could not English land be made to provide for English wants ?

I would not Bay there is no way of doing so, but Ido not Bee the way open, In England they have no land that they want to sell — no suitable land. If I could have got meadow land in England I should have preferred to stay there, because there would be a ready market ; but do not you see that if I can agree abont getting a place here I benefit New Zealand as well as the people who are to come ? If you take my men you also take the mutton that they will produce or the money that is sent here for their work.

Are you satisfied with what you have seen of the Army work in the colonies ? - lam very pleased with what I have seen. I think the work is going on on right lines, and that the movement will be a power for great good in the Australias.

And what, sir, do you think of this colony ? Are you disappointed or otherwise?

I am not disappointed in regard to the colony ; but I must say that lam disappointed with the colonists, taken as a whole, in one respect. This is what I mean. What strikes one the very moment he lends in the States is that every man and woman, every boy and girl, impresses you with the idea that they are part of a great nation — a nation that is going to be the leading nation of the world. It is that now, in fact. Here one cannot help noticing that there is a want of ambition to be a big people. This impresses a stranger. The general feeling seems to be, as one gentleman put it at a meeting in Wellington, that there is not too much land in New Zealand, and what there is is wanted for themselves and their children. An American would say, referring to his country : " Come, as many of you as like ; only let us have the right sort, We don't want the scum of Europe, who have nothing to do and no one to guide them, nor those who must necessarily drift into the slums. But if you are the right sort, come, and we will welcome yon." That is the difference — that is what strikes me as the strange thing about New Zealand. But of course I have been only making a scamper through your colony, and cannot pretend to know much abont it. One thing I shall not do. I shall not write a book about it when I go Home, as some have done after a flying visit. I know of nothing more ridiculous than that. I know that many in England will be anxious to hear what I think about the colonies, and the working men will want to know what I think, but I shall not write a book.

Is there likely to be any truth in the cabled statement that "the Holborn Guardians have informed the Government of the filthy condition of General Booth's Clerkenwell shelters ? "

Ah ! that is a mistake. For " the Hoiborn Guardians" you should read the ' Holborn Guardian.' That is the name of a contemptible little penny paper. None of us knew of its existence, but we have seen the correction made in come other paper. The shelters referred to are kept as clean as they can be, considering the number of people received there. Every man who enters a shelter has to wash, and as a rule his clothes go through a vermin exterminating process ; but our shelters are open to all comerß, and new people come every night, and I cannot say that the rule is in every case enforced. We don't turn people away.

The conversation here reverted to the immigration Bcheme, and, in the course of his utterances, General Booth said : So far as the fears of the working men are concerned, they are utterly groundless. My proposal to put people on the land in a systematic manner, assisting them till they are able to feel their feet, is the real solution of the working man's difficulty. That difficulty arises from the superfluity of labor. Unionism will not cure the evil. No unionism will make work where there is no work. And if there is no work for some of the men, those who get work must in some way or other divide their wages with those who are not employed, There* fore, the only remedy is to take the surplus labor away and put it on the land, where it can occupy itself without coming into competition with that of the artisan in the city. It must be in the interests of working men if I take the surplus labor away. A man wants a gardener. There are two applicants. He says the pay is so much, the hours bo long. One, driven by necessity, to be over-anxious for the billet, competeß with the other. If I take one of those gardeners away the other one can apply without fear of cutting competition. Thus the working man has nothing to fear from my scheme, nor the capitalist either, since everyone works for his living, and being settled on the land becomes a producer. My scheme, if looked at fairly, will be found bo be applicable nob only to the "submerged tenth," but to workmen all round, and I am snre it will do good.