COLONISATION BY WOMEN: AN IMPERIAL QUESTION.
[To THR EDITOR 07 TER " seacrAron."] Sin,—In the October number of the Canadian Magazine the statement is made that out of the 121,000 immigrants who have come into Canada during the past fiscal year, 78,10(3 were men, and only 27,273 were women. Thus 51,000 men without wives entered the Dominion during the year, while its last Census showed that already there were many more males than females in the. community ; and this discrepancy-in the- numerical balance of the sexes was especially observable in the provinces west of Ontario, the portion of Canada where the woman who possesses " home-eraft " is a, valuable asset not only to the State, but to the Empire.
Statesmen have from time to time made feeble and abortive efforts to induce the women of the British Isles to realise the responsibility which rests upon their shoulders in the matter of Imperial consolidation ; but it would seem from the above- mentioned figures that British women to-day prefer remaining in the old land and agitating for what they consider their rights in it rather than going to secure those whieh await them in the Britains beyond the seas. To a Canadian who realises to the full the significance of Rudyard Kipling's lines—
"We were taught by our English mothers To call Old England home."
the situation is one which calls for the co-operation and help of both Imperial and Colonial Governments. Not only is the labour market of the old land becoming disorganised by its enormous surplus of women, but the home life in the younger Britains is in danger of decadence, owing to the paucity of women in the great rural districts which are rapidly filling up with men. Successful administration in the economics of the home is the best guarantee of the success of the farmer.
What is the educational system of the United Kingdom accomplishing in the way of turning out women fit for the struggle in pioneer life ? What is the standard recognised by the women connected with the large women's emigration societies in the selection or rejection of the applicants anxious and willing to migrate ? A casual glance at the Reports of those organisations would suggest that the "rejected as unfit" are largely in excess of those passed on to the Colonies by these societies. Laudable as are the efforts of the women connected with these organisations to help the cause of their sex, and the Empire, it may possibly so happen that their verdict is far from being infallible, and that among the "rejected" there may be those whose niche remains empty in one of the great Colonies.
The argument may be brought forward—and with more or less justice—that the existing agencies which Colonial Governments have authorised for the emigration of men are sufficient for women in an age when women assert their equality with the male sex, and must, therefore, accept the responsibility of migrating under exactly the same conditions as they do. For many reasons this argument must be abandoned; but the time has arrived, in one part of the Colonial Empire at least, when some great united effort should be made by both Colonial and Imperial Governments to equalise the migration of the sexes. The increase in immigrants from the British Isles to Canada, as compared to the previous year, is 21,437; from the United States of America 14,253 (according to the figures quoted by the editor of the Canadian il(agasine referred to above). The chances are that the majority of young bachelors from Britain will settle in those districts where whole families from the United States are taking up wheatlands in the North-West, and naturally it follows that the young Britisher will find his helpmate in a woman born under the Stars and Stripes, and little likely to engraft into the being of her family the traditions of a United Empire. Canadian women of British ancestry are probably even more loyal to the British flag than are the women of the old land ; their loyalty to the best traditions of English home life is proverbial ; but Canadian women are a mere handful in that great West. It is a heterogeneous mass of womanhood from which the English innnigrant to-day has to choose. The question is one of Imperial importance, and as such should receive the best attention of every political faction at West- minster. The Labour Party is possibly most vitally interested in an effort to regulate the migration of the sexes, for the demand for female labour in the British Isles does not balance with the supply, and the men they wish to retain at home are being forced to emigrate by the pressure of female workers in the labour market. Imperialists and Ministers, besieged by women suffra- gists, are no less vitally interested ; and the Colonial Govern- ments, who desire stability of settlement and the establishment of the ideal community with its due proportion of home-making women, must be ready to ca-operate with any measures suggested by sagacious efforts from Westminster.
[We are fully in sympathy with our correspondent's sug- gestion that a strong effort should be made to establish a general system of female colonisation on a large scale. We also believe that many women who may appear unfit at home would do very well in Canada, and are therefore wrongly rejected. We know a case in which a girl went out from the
West of England to Canada and did extremely well, marrying a farmer who lived "miles from anywhere" and whose wife had to do work of the most arduous kind. Yet when she went out all the village declared that so shy, quiet, and apparently weak and unenterprising a young woman could never manage in a rough new country. We must never forget that there is a vast capacity for rising to an occasion in many men and
in almost all women.—En. Spectator.,
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