The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-07-27 00:00:00

The CONDITION of THINGS EQUALISED.

Some interesting figures, showing the progress of the
emigration movement, have just been published in
the Board of Trade "Statistical Abstract" for the
last fifteen years. In ordinary cases the one impelling
cause of emigration from Great Britain has been want
of employment or reduction of the profits from any
particular calling among the large class that is not
absolutely unemployed, nor yet entirely without
capital. It has sufficed that the want has
been felt ; there has never, as a rule, been
any lack of attraction in the foreign regions to
which our emigrants have resorted. Sometimes it
has been stimulated by exceptional causes, as the
discovery of gold in Australia, or the movement a few
years since to send agricultural labourers to Canada;
but still the flow has been outward, and the return
current too insignificant to attract much notice. It
has been reserved for the last year or two to exhibit a
remarkable change by the fact that what was once
the most attractive field for the English working man
has ceased to be a land of plenty and promise, and
has become so like his own that he has not only
found it better to stay where he is, rather than
to fly to ills he knows not of, but has actually, in
not unfrequent cases, returned home after a brief
experiment abroad. A few years ago it would have
been thought as unlikely that an expatriated English
artisan or Irish peasant farmer would leave the
United States in disgust, and recross the Atlantic to
Great Britain, as that a Caledonian should go back
from England to Scotland after an experience of the
pleasant pastures which the South lays open to his
energies. The truth, however, is, that a great change
has come over the American States of late years, which
may be epitomised in the words that its unoccupied
land is no longer found to be boundless, while its
labouring classes have increased beyond the capacity
for constant employment. So, when the wave of
commercial disaster and collapse passed over the
Republic some years ago, the surplus of its operatives
fell into destitution, as in older countries, and the
employed obtained not more than a bare subsistence.
Many came back to England, some drifted over into
Canada, and several shiploads went all the way to
Australia. The official returns show that the num-
bers of emigrants from the United Kingdom to
the States, which were 130,528 in 1863, reached the
climax of 166,7,30 in 1873, the year when material
prosperity had attained its height, and have since re-
ceded, until last year they were only 45,481. The exodus
to Australia and New Zealand has been more steady,
but it too has fallen from 50,17 in 1873 to 30,138 in
1877. On the other hand, the immigrants, whose
statistics we only have for the last eight years, have
increased from 49,157 in 1870 to 81,848 last year, when
a positively greater number came over here from the
United States than emigrated thither. The explana-
tion is what we have stated. The conditions of living
are now more equalised in the two countries, and,
balancing one thing against another, the British
operative finds that he is not worse off as a citizen of a,
country which in expanding its Imperial responsi-
bilities does by that very act widen his own heritage.
—Daily Telegraph.