LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
EMIGRATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR, I am sorry Mr. Jenkins disagrees with my arguments, and is inclined to think poorly of my moral character. I can respect his enthusiasm, though I wish it were tempered by some regard for practical considerations. I do not think be differs from my state- ment of the case as much as he supposes. I have protested against the assumption that the Colonies can accommodate all the surplus labour of Great Britain, and Mr. Jenkins, while be challenges my words, admits to holding "that our Colonies afford for the present an almost illimitable field for the settlement of labour." I have denied generally that the Colonies are "anxious to keep the enjoy- ment of their vast resources to themselves ;" and Mr. Jenkins, while he points out two eases which really prove only that over- stocked colonies object to have fresh immigrants forced upon them, declares "no one will contend" "that the colonial communities are not anxious to receive settlers upon their waste land." I went on to show that it was not sufficient to bring labour and land together, and that the new settler required money in hand "to buy food and seed and clothes for the first year, and to pay for some shelter till he has put up a house,"—and it was with reference to this, not, as Mr. Jenkins supposes, to his want of muscular power or experience, that I said the English labourer could not "proceed at once to clear the backwoods or the bash." Mr. Jenkins entirely admits this position. He proposes to meet the difficulty by asking the State to advance the necessary money ; and he wishes the State also, if I understand him rightly, to give an impulse to emigration by the cheapening of ocean fares. I did not argue against these doctrines in my first letter, because they had not come before me. But I think the first in particular so un- speakably mischievous, that with your permission I will try to point out some of the chief objections to it.
I will start with inquiring how much money the State must ad- vance to settlers in a new country. I will take the most favourable case of a handy, industrious couple, man and wife, leaving Eng- land at the right time, met at Quebec or Melbourne by a coloniza- tion agent, and conducted at once to a homestead, which in Canada may be given them, and that in Australia can now be obtained on a system of deferred payments. I will assume that the new settler is able to buy all that he wants at the lowest market price, and is so well instructed and so teachable, that he at once falls into the colonial system of farming, which is everywhere very different from the English. I think I am justified in assum- ing that the young couple will need to be supported for five months during which the husband is ploughing, sowing, fencing, and-get- ting in his harvest; and that they must produce and sell enough corn (or its equivalent) to maintain them during the next twelve months. Taking wheat as the crop raised, and allowing a produc- tion of 40 quarters, which at £1 10s. each—a high price for the backwoods—will give only £60 for the year's expenses ; and assuming that there is an average of 10 bushels to the acre— though this, I believe, is an over-estimate--they must have 32 acres under cultivation. As they will require some land in grass, they will have in practice to farm 40 acres, of which 8 are divided off : in all, 2,200 yards of fencing. Let us now add up the items. Cost of wood house, furniture, and stable, £7; food and clothes for man and wife during five months, £15; cost of horse, plough, and tools, £15: seed-corn, £6; keep of horse during ploughing and harvest, £3; in all, £46. I need not say, Sir, that this calcu- lation is far below the mark. No man by himself could plough 32 and fence more than 40 acres in five months. I have gratuitously assumed that he finds his corn land ready cleared, and his grass land sufficiently timbered to save the expense of buying fencing material. I have put out of sight casualties and losses from want of experience. It is true I have taken for granted that he will not earn anything during the winter months. The time from harvest to seed-time in Canada and in Australia is slack time ; and if immigrants are to be imported, not because they are wanted in the labour-market, but because they are not wanted at home, they will not, I think, be able to compete with the old hands.
The native emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland numbered in 1869 nearly 200,000, of whom about 8 in 13 were male. Mr. Jenkins wishes to reduce the cost of passage, which is now as low as £4 4s. by sailing-ship, and £6 6s. by steamer, for Canada ; and will, I suppose, reduce it appreciably, perhaps 50 per cent. He will offer every adult male free or cheap land when he gets to his destina- tion, and a loan of 146 in hand, for it cannot well be doled out
in weekly instalments. I confess to believing that this prospect: would call out a national exodus. But if it only raises the number- of emigrants to 300,000, the passage-money which the State will pay for these in a single year will be at least three-quarters of a. million And if only one-half of them are adult males, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have to lend them nearly £7,000,000. I of course assume that we help all indifferently, for I do not see how we can draw a line ; and this will create another difficulty. Either we shall be helping tens of thousands of men to
themselves in the United States, if the emigrants are allowed to select as at present, or we shall be discharging this vast multitude upon Canada, which at present absorbs less than 20,000' yearly. Of course I know they will not stay in the Dominion. They will cross over into Minnesota or Nebraska, either with the £46 in their pockets, or having spent it in the vain struggle to produce profitably in an overpeopled country. For it must be re-- membered that it is quite possible to produce corn and wool that shall practically be unsaleable. These myriads of men cannot all be settled near railroads, or navigable rivers, or even near roads.. Such of them as stay in Canada will be sent off to Manitobah and Lake Nipigon, and will have to wait till civilization comes up to them. Will they be in a better position than the Western farmers settled in one of the richest districts of the world, who used to burn. their corn as fuel before the Ohio and Illinois railway was con- structed? Mr. Jenkins thinks that such settlements will speedily call for and create tools, manufactures, and artizan.s. Will he ex- plain how they can do this, unless the firat agricultural settlers have sold their corn, hay, and wool? Has he calculated what the cartage of bulky articles for long distances over backwood tracks. coats?
I have confined lay argument on this occasion to Canada, be- cause I feel sure that if the State is to subsidize emigration, it will not send its emigrants to a country like Australia, three months' dis- tant. But if necessary, I am prepared to prove, (1) that those who calculate the agricultural land in Australia at anything like the superficial area, over-estimate it fifty-fold or a hundred-fold ; (2). that Australia, from its geographical position, is eminently unfitted to be a great corn-exporting country ; and (3) that if the balance be struck, the mother country owes immensely more to the Australian colonies than the Australian colonies to the mother-- country.
Mr. Jenkins thinks Cromwell, and perhaps Bismarck, would dispose of colonial reluctance to be overcrowded in a very sum- mary way. I seem to remember that Cromwell tried an experi- ment on colonization in Ireland which failed signally. That either- he or Bismarck could over-ride the laws of political economy appears to me about as probable as that they could make water flow up-hill. As to forcing the colonies to do what they are deliberately resolved pot to do, the American War of Independence- settled that for us.
To conclude, Canada and Australia have tried the plan of assisted emigration, and have given it up because it fails. The- great mass of emigrants cannot be induced to repay the money- advanced by a Government, and will not stay in a colony if they think they can better themselves by leaving it. Still, the colonies. are, I believe, doing all they can in more sensible ways, by giving_ or cheapening land, and by making roads, to attract new settlers. I do not say England can do nothing to assist them. Our Govern- ment can procure and circulate information, and might, I think,, do much good by warning emigrants against some schemes, such. as Brazil has been unhappily famous for. In highly exceptional times it might, perhaps, do no great harm by slightly reducing the expense of ocean fares for men who are not paupers, tramps, or idiots. But generally a time of depression in England is one of depression also in America and in the colonies. Nor will it be- easy- for Government to hold its hand if it once begins giving._ Its real function, I think, is to legislate forwards to the employ- ment of labour at home, at the not very distant date when emigra- tion shall have become difficult. Meanwhile, if the English work- ing-men will stint themselves of drink and form emigration clubs,. they will relieve the glut at home in a gradual and healthy way.. If Mr. Jenkins and his friends will help men whom they know and can trust with little advances of money, I believe the ventures so. made will generally be repaid, and will promote a generous. sympathy between elms and class. I am so far from wishing to. check a movement of this sort, .that my last act before writing my first letter to you had been to procure information for some intending emigrants of my village, and to send a trifling subscrip- tion towards their passage-money.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN.
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