The Life-Blood of the Empire. 



427 



toria, Soulh Australia, Western Australia, and 

 Queensland well to have combined, and spent, 

 if necessary, between them one million per 

 annum in getting out from Enj^^land yearly one 

 hundred thousand of the pick of our young men 

 and young women of the labouring classes, and 

 this they could have accomplished by an assisted 



Peopling the Empire : Boys from Dr. barnardo's Home 

 en route to Canada. 



passage rif ;^io offered to each adult, male or 

 female. If they had done this for twenty years 

 it would have cost them twenty millions, and 

 they would cert.iinly h:ive added to their popula- 

 tion four to five millions. If they had done it 

 since 187; — that is, for forty years — it would 

 have cost them forty millions, and they would 

 have added to their population over ten million 

 people — that is, they would now have a popu- 

 lation of over fifteen millions instead of under 

 five millions, a population utterly inadequ.ite 

 to the size of their country, and which makes 

 other nations look on it with envious eyes. 

 Then (jnly think of how that immigration of 

 two millions at a cost of ;£'20,ooo,ooo, or of 

 four millions at a cost of ;£^4o,ooo,ooo, would 

 have added to the nalion.al we:dth. It is un- 

 thinkable. Statesmen are eillier knowingly or 

 unknowingly blind to the fart that a full-grown 

 healihv voung man or woman of sound mind 

 under t\\<-nty-five years (jf age is the best im- 

 portation that any young country can get, espe- 

 cially if the immigrants are English and with 

 some education ; they are the producers of wealth 



from the day they land, and it is a poor esti- 

 mate to say (apart altogether from the wealth 

 they will help to produce) that each man or 

 woman, from the time they put their foot on 

 the shore, is worth ;^ioo to the community 

 there and then; therefore the 100,000 immi- 

 grants procured yearly at a cost of ;£ri,ooo,ooo 



are worth when they land 



_^io,ooo,ooo. 



GETTING HU.MAN MATERIAL FOR 

 NOTHING. 



The importers wish and try 

 to get these valuable cargoes 

 for nothing, and they do so 

 because their Mother England 

 does not tell her children what 

 they are worth, and gives 

 them neither advice nor as- 

 sistance. This is all very well 

 to our own Colonies. We 

 need not grudge them what 

 they have made over us, but 

 when we think that a sensible, 

 businesslike, and statesman- 

 like arrangement between the 

 Mother Country and all her 

 Colonies would have induced 

 millions of English, Irish, and 

 Scotch emigrants to go to 

 those Colonies, instead of to 

 the United Stales for the last 

 sixty years, it ought to make 

 us feel that we have managed 

 things very badly indeed. 

 Tlu' lion, (jeorge Foster, .Sir John Taverner, 

 Sir William Hall Jones, and Sir John McCall are 

 doubtless, as you say, experts, but they are 

 very much interested in getting splendid wealth- 

 producing material for their respective countries 

 for nothing. They are importers of human 

 goods, and even think that the Mother Country 

 might assist in sending out the priceless 

 material, not realising, apparently, what it is 

 worth to them to-day. Naturally, at the outset, 

 they could not pay for it, but once a young 

 nation gets her head above water and has 

 plenty of undeveloped land, it will pay her well 

 to get immigrants by the bait of assisted pas- 

 sages, and, after all, it is only a bait — a sprat 

 to catch a mackerel — and yet they stumble 



over It. 



THE WRONG WAY TO COLONISE. 



Another great mistake thai many of the 

 Colonial Governments make is, as .Sir John 

 McCall says, not getting all their available land 

 settled up as fast as settlers come in; they 

 cither deliberately keep it b.ack or it is kept 



