PLANNED EMIGRATION
[To the Editor of TIIE SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—As one who has been officially interested, for a number of years; in matters relating to the administration of the Poor Law and the problem of unemployment. in Wales, I should like to support the general contention of Mr. Ammon, in your issue of June 14th, in regard to the subject of planned emigration. I have long been convinced that a well-conceived plan of emigration by communities would materially affect the Position in the valleys of South Wales, where the exhaus- tion of the earlier coal measures, the use of oil in the navies of the world, the extension of electrical power and the closing down of iron and steel works have all combined to produce the present industrial depression in the South Wales coalfield and consequent excess of workers. These men are as fine a body of workmen as can be seen in any part of the world and I believe they would welcome an opportunity of emigrating to a new country 'under the British flag, if they could go in large parties from the same districts and be settled together in their new homes. But it is clear that their new vocation would have to be, in the main, the reclamation of hitherto untilled land for the purposes of agriculture and its allied industries. It must be remembered that though these 'men, where they have worked at all—and unfortunately there are thousands of young men who have had no work since leaving school—have been colliers and iron and steel workers, many of them came into the coalfield from the rural districts, and even those who were born in the industrial districts are mostly descended, a generation or two back, from the sturdy peasant class and have probably an agricultural bias. In the western part of the South Wales coalfield indeed it is not uncommon to see colliers who are also small holders, just as in the quarry districts of 'North Wales many of the quarrymen are small- holders. The excellent work done in the allotments in recent years has also tended to familiarize colliery and other workers With thejilling of the soil. Mr. Littlejohn, in your issue of June 21st, comments on Mr. Ammon's letter and points out, as an Australian, that there may be unemployed men and women in the Dominions also. That, of course, may be unfortunately true, but I would respectfully suggest that the planning together, by our own Government and that of the Australian Commonwealth, might meet both problems. As I understand the position, there is a flocking of men to the towns in Australia and the other Dominions, just as there is in our own country. But as those who are advocating the resumption of emigration which was stopped after the War envisage the situation, planned emigration would mean the opening up of new territory by pioneer communities who would be producing, for their own sustenance, most of the commodities that are essential for the support of life. Such a plan would embrace our own unem- ployed and those of the Dominions.
I cannot help feeling that unless we get to work, without further delay, in the formulation of plans of this kind there will be serious social disintegration in South Wales. But there is also the other serious factor of the gradual severing of the links that bind us to the Dominions and Colonies which have been established by the tenacity and power of our own people in the centuries that have gone by.—I am, Sir, your
obedient servant, JAMES EVANS,
General Inspector for Wales under the Ministry of Health (retired).
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