Town Lads for N.Z. Farms.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 13, 28 September 1910, Page 7

Town Lads for N.Z. Farms.

MR. SEDGWICK’S DIFFICULT TASK.

LONDON, August 19.

Mr. Thomas E. Sedgwick appears to be finding considerable difficulty in arranging for the emigration of the 50 town lads he was empowered by the New 'Zealand Government to select as a trial party for New Zealand farms. The Dominion Government is prepared to grant the lads assisted passages, and, 1 understand, to guarantee to find them work and to keep a fatherly eye upon them until such time as they may’ be safely permitted to paddle their own canoes. Beyond the amount represented by the New Zealand Government’s assistance, however, Mr. Sedgwick estimates that

fie will require some £OOO in order to pay the balance of passage money, provide each lad with a decent outfit and to Cover incidental expenses in connection .with their emigration.

This amount, or some part thereof, Mr. Sedgwick designed to obtain from the Central Unemployed Body for Lon-

won, but as a result of i.ihnost daily Communication with that body lie seems to be on the point of ignoring them and making an appeal to public philanthropy for the desired sum.

The attitude of the Central Unemployed Body towards Mr Sedgwick’s scheme may

perhaps lie best shown by a letter which he has addressed to the President of the Local Government Board, Mr. John Burns, to whom Mr. Sedgwick first broached his scheme and with wliom he has been in regular communication on the subject since his return from the Dominion. To Mr. Burns he wrote last Friday:

“They (the Central Unemployed Body) decline to co-operate unless all the individuals of the party are selected by them, as well as passed by me on behalf of New Zealand. This would bar any provincial lad, boy under 18, or person in badly paid work at present being of the party. The Board, however, could not say how long such selection wotdd take, as all the applications have to be received through the local distress committees.

“If the distress committee under whoso aegis most of the selected eases would come, is typical of the others, the case is quite hopeless.

“I had seen over twenty most suitable lads in one borough, and therefore called at that local distress office. I was in-

formed that no cases could be entertained under 18 years of age, and that casual and blind-alley workers, if considered at all, would be ‘strangled with red-tape,’ notwithstanding the facts that your Board have ruled that such lads.

when upwards of 15 years, are eligible under the Act of 1995, and that the colonial farmers in many districts prefer them at the younger age, and they regard a lad who has worked as van and shop boy. in jam, tank and wire-rope works, in oil-cake, lead or saw-mills (according to the demand for his labour) as more versatile, adaptable and likely to succeed than one who has spent his whole time at one or perhaps two jobs. The latter would, moreover, be far more prone to drift into his old trade

in the towns. As the season is rapidly approaching, the necessity for expedition is recognised; but the secretary informed me that it might be December 31 before they were passed, as after they had been

accepted on behalf of the Dominion, each case would occupy at least twenty-four hours for official investigations, and special inquiry officers would have to be engaged. The whole work of the committee was in a state of suspended animation. and. although the limited period, when lads are most needed on the dairy and other farms of the Southern Hemisphere, is now commencing, the new registers had not even been received from the head office. “I therefore write to inquire whether

you can suggest any other source whence the necessary £OOO for fares (repayable) and outfit for the 50 lads can be obtained. Otherwise 1 am afraid that this first and only offer of reciprocation in migration received from the overseas Dominions will have to be rejected. “As you know, I regard this matter as of so paramount importance to all con-

cerned that I have spent upwards of £lOO of my own money—which was all 1 had —and borrowed an additional £5O to go and secure this truly patriotic offer from the Government of New Zealand, and it would be an Imperial disaster if it now fell through.

“Only those who have both lived amidst the hideous poverty of East London and other- parts and seen the abundance of everything save labour in the

glorious lands of New Zealand can realise what a difference £(>99 would make for 50 lads, the friends they would get out to them, and their posterity.”

On Mr. Burns’ reply to this letter will depend Mr. >Sedgwi«l<’s future course of action. It must be said for him that the unsympathetic attitude of the Central Unemployed Body has not in the least damped Iris ardour. On the contrary, it has in vulgar parlance “put his back up,” and unless the intervention of Mr. Burns produces favourable results from the Central Body, Mr. Sedgwick intends to try the effect of a newspaper campaign. It is said that the proprietor of a certain widely read London newspaper is not at all averse from opening his columns to an appeal for funds in furtherance of Mr. Sedgwick’s scheme, provided that it is made applicable to all our overseas possessions and not, restricted to any particular area. In addition to sounding the possibilities of newspaperland, Mr. Sedgwick is submitting his scheme in detail to a number of influential and wealthy’ men who have first-hand knowledge of New Zealand, and he is sanguine that whatever assistance the Central Unemployed Body may eventually consent to give him. he will be able to fulfil the task he has set himself on the lines of his own programme. One thing Mr. Sedgwick feels that he

should have, and that is the assistance of some one thoroughly versed in New Zealand’s requirements to assist him in the final selection of the lads emigrated. The most suitable man for this work in London at the present time—apart from the High Commissioner hiinself —is undoubtedly Mr. T. E. Donne. He knows the Dominion from end to end as few people know it. and, with his wide knowledge of men and things, should be a capable judge of the sort of lad who is Jikelv to prove a useful settler.