ON EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FOR OVERSEAS LIFE. 313 



Percentage still on Farms. — It is worthy of note, however, that of the 594 3'ouths 

 settled overseas in 1925, 86 per cent, were known to be still on farms on December 31, 

 1926, while but 6i per cent, were to be found in large cities. 



Instance of what a Youth can do. — One instance may be given of many of individual 

 progress made possible by General Booth's scheme for boys. A young miner of eighteen 

 arrived in Australia in January 1925. By December of the same year he repaid to the 

 Army the expenditure incurred on his behalf out of Army funds. Then solely by his 

 earning capacity on an Australian farm he was able to pay the migration costs of his 

 father, mother, brother and sister. He therefore nominated them, and they arrived 

 in Australia on October 21 last. Thus within twenty-two months this young fellow had 

 done remarkably well. A friend who recently returned to this country, and who 

 actually saw him, brought the information that on the arrival of his relatives this young 

 man took a week's holiday, met them, and handed his mother £15 for temporary 

 expenses. The father and brother are now in good situations. 



Experimental stage passed. — But this work has long passed the experimental stage, 

 for during the past twenty-five years the Army has happily and successfully 

 transplanted 160,000 folk — men and women, and children — from tho British Isles 

 to the King's Oversea Dominions. The failures over all have amounted to less 

 than 1 per cent. 



The determining Factor in Migration. — The founder of the Army, the late General 

 Booth, grasped the essential fact that it was the absorbing power of the lands overseas, 

 and not social or economic pressure at home, which must determine the flow of migra- 

 tion. By using the organisation of the Army, with its vast ramifications at home 

 and overseas, and utilising to the full up-to-date methods of communication, the two 

 problems have been paralleled — which incidentally is the means of solving both — of 

 vacant lands overseas and unemployment at home ; accomplished much good and 

 useful work, and demonstrated in the unity of control peculiar to the Army's system 

 the essential lines on which the work of transplantation must be carried on. Work 

 has been so arranged that every worker emigrating under the auspices of the Army 

 has sailed with an assurance that work and a welcome have awaited him or her on 

 arrival. 



An aid to Creation of Trade. — Trade can be created by agricultural employment, and 

 opportunities of profitable employment exist in so many parts of the Empire that our 

 economic ills could be substantially cured were we to make use of more widely so 

 simple an expedient as training in elementary agriculture for migration overseas. 

 Even if the training of boys for farm work, with which this paper particularly deals, 

 were the only attempt made to turn non-producers into producers, the result, if the 

 work were undertaken on adequate lines, would be largely to improve the Empire's 

 economic outlook. Apart from this important result there would be incalculable 

 benefit to health and moral questions, and the British race would in an increasing 

 degree be regenerated against the present danger of degeneration. 



Of course no Empire Schemes for Migration and Settlement of Boys can be 

 entirely satisfactory unless they are followed or accompanied by the migration and 

 settlement of larger numbers of women. It has always been the policy of the 

 Salvation Army to do nothing to accentuate the disparity in numbers of the sexes in 

 the Homeland and Overseas, but rather to emigrate more women than men. The 

 recent Census showed approximately two million (2,000,000) more females than 

 males in the British Isles. Overseas in many districts men outnumber women. 



Population and Empire go together, and the day when our death-rate exceeds 

 the birth-rate our powers in the councils of the world will begin to decline. I submit, 

 therefore, that the Old Country can engage in nothing more important and nothing 

 more profitable than the transfer of tens of thousands of her young people to tho 

 vast undeveloped lands of the King's Overseas Dominions, under such conditions as 

 I have outlined. The task before us is the opposite to that which confronted thie 

 country two generations back ; then it was the transforming of a rural to an urban 

 population, now it is the transforming of an urban population to a rural one. 



Let us begin with the boys. Overseas the presence of these young people will be 

 a strength to the Empire and their successful settlement a bond in commerce. 

 Furthermore, the breath of the Homeland which they will carry, minglmg with the 

 freedom of the new lands, will make for the growth and development of a people 

 well calculated to carry high the banner of our Christian civilisation : ever ready to 

 sustain the best British traditions and well able to develop the Great Heritage which, 

 in the good Providence of God, are ours. 



