The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-10-09 00:00:00

EMIGRATION FOR WORKING MEN.

On Saturday at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition
Mr. Robert Wilson, P. 5.5., delivered the second of a
series of lectures to the working classes which are to
be given under the auspices of the London Working
Men's Association, his subject being "Emigration."
Sir Graham Berry, and afterwards Mr. W. H. Le
Fevre, occupied the chair, and there were a consider-
able number of working men present. In commenc-
ing the lecturer said that he was fully impressed with
the magnitude of the scheme which he desired to
advocate in connection with Imperial emigration, and
was quite aware of the many difficulties which any
Government might have to contend against in the
furtherance of such a project; but he was equally
convinced that these difficulties were by no means
of an unsurmountable nature, if they were
taken in hand by statesmen who had the
welfare of the working-classes at heart, end
who were willing and determined to bring the matter
to a satisfactory conclusion. He was convinced, like-
wise, that the solid benefits which would accrue to
the suffering masses of this country, through a wise
and comprehensive system of State-aided emigration,
would be sufficiently great to compensate fully for the
time spent on legislation, and also for whatever funds
it might be found necessary to spend upon this all-
important measure. That Imperial emigration
would reduce the pauperism of this country was a
fact which would hardly be contested, and surely this
of itself was a desirable object. When they came to
reckon that the paupers in England and Wales alone
had cost the country on an average during the last 10
years something like £7,000,000 annually, there
could be little doubt that it was time that some
steps should be taken to reduce these enormous
figures. It would be contended that pauperism was
inevitable in a country like England, and that he
readily admitted, bat he did protest against the
working part of the population being compelled to
support in poorhouses, with all the expenses atten-
dant on the same, thousands of able-bodied men who
would gladly work if they could find work to do;
whilst all the time we had millions of acres of fertile
land in our colonies. There these men, who were a
burden upon the community here, might themselves
live comfortably and be enabled to raise their families
in comfort and respectability, besides peopling our
colonies with men who would prove loyal subjects of
the British Crown. There were many who would
condemn in the strongest possible language any inter-
ference by the State in the emigration of the people
of this country, yet would look passively on voluntary
emigration, which, he contended, should be encour-
aged as much as possible by the Government; for it
was clear that in advocating voluntary emigration the
best class of our workmen left our shores, and en-
dangered the high reputation which England held
for superior workmanship. It must be apparent that
if a working man had saved sufficient to pay his own
and his family's expenses, he must have been in a
good position to do so, and, in fact, have occupied
the position of a first-class workman; and this was
just the class cf men that we wished to retain amongst
us, if we were to maiutain the position of superiority
over other nations we had till lately held, as regarded
our manufactures. if we were to let our first-class
workmen leave our shores, and had to depend upon
those of an inferior stamp who were left behind, it
could not be a matter of surprise that our trade
should rapidly decrease as it was doing, and that the
end which wa desired to remove from our midst
should be increased tenfold. In supplying the
colonies, on the other hand, with our surplus labour,
the wages paid would, of course, assume a steady
proportion to our own, and the temptation to our
first-class workmen to leave England would be
greatly lessened; the high wages offered in some of
our colonies would be lowered by the supply which
we should send. Thus the end would be gained;
we should people the colonies with men
who could not but feel grateful to the
English Government which had enabled them
to leave the mother country at a time when
they were on the point of starvation, thus enabling
them to realise by their labour a degree of comfort
for themselves which they would never have dreamed
of in England. That there were many hundreds of
thousands in this country who would gladly hail a
measure of this kind as a relief for their sufferings he
was certain; and why there should be such a diversity
of opinion regarding the question was a puzzle to
many more than himself, for it simply meant this,
that whilst we could provide at a comparatively small
cost, a warm shelter for our famishing brother, we, in
the shape of the poor rates, Sze., prefer to keep him in
a starving condition, although he was a national dis-
grace to us, and to pay year by year as much for the
maintenance as would tend to place him in a position
of comparative prosperity. There had been opened up
a vast and truly fertile field for emigration during the
Last 12 years, which would be sufficient for the whole
of our surplus labour to settle on in comfort 10 times
told, and that without one tithe of the difficulty that
would have had to be encountered previous to that
time. He referred to the great North-West terri-
tories of Canada, which previous to the time of which
he spoke was held by the Hudson's Bay Company,
but which fell into the hands of the Dominion 12
years ago. This country was described as the most
healthy and fertile on the face of God's earth, and it
was suited to the wants of the poor emigrant, for
whilst in other parts of Canada years of hard labour had
to be expended upon a clearing before a satisfactory
result could be obtained, there were in Manitoba and
the north-west territories immense tracks of prairie
Land which required but little preparation before
from its bountiful soil a crop could be obtained which
Lord Dufferin described in eloquent language as
waving like a sea of golden corn' creating a longing
within him as he said, for the day when those in
Ireland who had not the power of getting farms
fit to live upon should have a share in the pro-
lific plains of which, indeed, but a small part had
been as yet brought into cultivation. And what
Lord Dufferm said of Ireland might with equal
truth be said as regarded the surplus population of
England. From the system which had hitherto pre-
vailed in regard to emigration it had resulted that
two-thirds of the population who left our shores to
settle abroad went to the United States, and he main-
tained that it would have been better that some steps
should have been taken by the Government to induce
these emigrants to settle in our own colonies instead
of going to the States. We had all the facilities in
our colcnies to induce men to settle there if we went
the right way to work, and he thought that there was
now some chance of that desirable end being gained,
as there was a willingness on the part of our colonies
to meet the Imperial Government in various ways for
the assistance of those whom they might select to
send in obtaining a comfortable settlement. A
discussion followed, a good deal of foreign matter
being imported into it by some of the speakera, who
wandered from the subject of emigration to various
other matters, such as the utilisation of the waste
Lands of this country and the nationalisation of the
land. There seemed to be an impression on the
minds of some of the speakers that the fair prospects
which were offered them by emigration were a snare
and a delusion, one man declaring that he had gone to
America expecting to find it a paradise, and had been
greatly mistaken. Of course, as the lecturer pointed
out in reply, a man who is unprosperous at home
through sheer laziness will be unprosperous any-
where, and it is only the men who will work and work
hard who are wanted in the colonies. He also
pointed out that it was nonsense to talk of culti-
vating the waste lands at home and expecting
to get a profit out of them when farmers could
not make even the most productive land give them an
adequate return. Mr. Le Fevre, in conveying the
thanks of the meeting to the lecturer, thought that
State-aided emigration should be conducted with the
greatest amount of care, but he was thoroughly of
opinion that every facility should be afforded would-be
emigrants for obtaining information of the country
whither they contemplated going. In conclusion, he
dwelt strongly upon the competition in labour which
existed everywhere, and the fact that employers
would always get the cheapest labour they could in
the colonies, which was not always English labour.
The proceedings closed with a vote of thanks to the
chairman.

CUSTOMER (to storekeeper) : "t see yoa've got a
pign up, French and German spoken here.' You
dou't speak them yourself, and you haven't any clerk.
Who speaks 'em?" Storekeeper: "Why, the people
who come in that want 'em spoken."