The papers are all publishing long stories of emigrants' hard-
ships, apparently in order to induce labourers to remain content with 12s. a week. As emigrants are not guided in the least by newspapers, but by their friends' letters, we shall not enter into the controversy, but we must quote one amusing letter on the other side. " P. W. G. W." writes to the Times to say it man can get on in New Zealand. He landed there without a friend, and finding clerks at a discount, walked 120 miles to the Dunstan gold-fields, carried wood to a hotel—eight miles of rough travelling —for 3s. a bundle ; carried buckets of water into town up a steep hill for 4d. a bucket ; drove first a bullock waggon and then a two- horsedray for £3 a week ; carted bricks, broke stones on the road, made roads in the bush, walked any distance to any place where work was going, built thatched houses, in short, did everything he could find to do, and was " most comfortable and happy." The writer is evidently quite unconscious that he was under no need to emigrate, that if he were set down on Salisbury Plain with a pick he would reap corn, that in short, he is nearly as efficient as a full-blooded Yankee. If all men without money were like him, poverty would be extinct in England in five years.
Previous page
