it is desirable that further facilities should be given to promote emigration; and, if so, upon the means by and the conditions under which such emigration can best be carried out, and the quarters to which it can most advantageously be directed."1 After having examined nine witnesses the following interim report was issued towards the end of the month of July:

Your Committee are of opinion that at this late period of the Session it will not be in their power to conclude their investigations; they have therefore agreed to report the evidence, already taken, to the House, and to recommend that a committee on the same subject should be appointed early in the next Session of Parliament."

The committee again sat in 1890, and for a third time in 1891. It was in the latter year that the following summary of their conclusions was issued:

1. Your Committee have no grounds for thinking that the present condition of the United Kingdom generally calls for any general scheme of state-organized colonization or emigration.

2. The powers in possession of local authorities should be sufficient to enable them, at no onerous risk, to assist in the colonization or emigration of persons or families from their own localities. 3. The congested districts of Ireland and of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland form an exceptional case and require relief by assistance to industries, to colonization or emigration, and, where suitable, to migration.

4. The provisions proposed in the Land and Congested Districts (Ireland) Bill are ample for these purposes.

5. Provisions similar to some of the foregoing should be made for the Crofter districts of Scotland.

6. The Colonization Board be continued and reconstructed for the purpose of colonization and emigration from such districts. 7. The power of enlarging Crofters' holdings in that Act should. be kept alive.

8. Crofts vacated by emigration or migration should be added to existing holdings without power of subdivision.

9. The experiment of colonizing the Crofter population in Canada should be further tried.

10. The proposals of the Government of British Columbia 3 should be favorably entertained.

1 Report on Colonization, 1889, p. III.

2 Ibid.

'These proposals fell through as the Governments failed to agree on matters of finance.

II. The agency of companies for colonization and emigration should be taken advantage of, both as regards the aforesaid colonization in Canada and elsewhere.

12. The Government grant to the Emigrants' Information Office should be increased.1

As a result of this report, further governmental schemes were dropped, but the grant awarded annually to the Emigrants' Information Office was augmented. From 1891 to 1905 no action seems to have been taken, but, in the latter year, the Unemployed Workmen Act, which contained clauses facilitating the transference of needy workpeople, was passed.2 In the following year, Sir Rider Haggard made certain suggestions for a colonization scheme, which may be briefly summarized as follows. The authorities at home were to advance to the Salvation Army, or a similar body, a sum of money roughly equaling thirty thousand pounds, and in return the institution was to collect a vast number of distressed town-bred families and install them on farm plots in Canada. A departmental committee was appointed to give consideration to the suggestions, but this body reported unfavorably and the scheme was not attempted.3 Since 1906 the inactivity of the central authorities has been continued, but a great expansion in the working of charitable institutions has marked the period. To-day there are considerably more than a hundred societies engaged in the emigration movement; some give their services in a general way, others confine their operations to people of certain religious denominations or to dwellers in particular localities, whilst others again deal only with women or children. The majority give financial assistance in deserving cases, though certain of them are organized merely to provide information, guidance, and protection. As a general rule, the societies are doing valuable work by sending to the various colonies able-bodied people who could not otherwise join in the exodus.

1 Report on Colonization, 1891, p. xvi.

2 "The Central Body may, if they think fit, in any case of an unemployed person referred to them by a distress committee, assist that person by aiding the emigration or removal to another area of that person and any of his dependents." Ed. 7, ch. 18, sec. 5.

3 Cf. "Colonization Schemes," Chapter X, p. 244.

5

In bygone years, certain of the less responsible organizations made emigration a vehicle for transferring "undesirables" from the Mother Country to the Colonies. As no such practices have been attempted for many years past, it is somewhat discouraging to note the attitude with which a few of the Colonial Governments still approach the home societies as a body. Everything which can be done to eliminate the unfit from the fit is now performed by the societies, and none but those who can undergo a severe and searching test are permitted to proceed. In many cases, farm colonies have been instituted within the United Kingdom and prospective settlers are required to give practical demonstrations of their fitness at one or other of them before they are passed as suitable. Not only do the societies themselves require their candidates to pass a very severe test, but the officials attached to the staffs of the various High Commissioners and Agents-General institute searching inquiries also. Authentic figures are available to prove that, of the people befriended by the East End Emigration Fund, less than 5 per cent turn out failures, only 5 per cent fail from the Church Emigration Society, never more than 4 per cent annually from the South African Colonisation Society, less than 2 per cent from Dr. Barnardo's Homes, whilst other societies can show equally satisfactory records.1 In spite of this complex system of selection and these reassuring figures, there are still people, living in the colonies, who condemn the work of the societies in general. A writer living at Hamilton, Ontario, says: 2

At present, among the great stream of English people whom your agencies are sending to us, are many who are the scourings from London streets the hangers-on to Church charitable organizations the type of men who demand work, but that is the last thing they really desire.

It will be noticed that in this quotation not one shred of evidence is given to support the serious allegations made, nor does the writer seem to be aware that no man who was work-shy and studied his comforts would leave London for Hamilton;

1 Official Report of the Emigration Conference convened by the Royal Colonial Institute, 1910, pp. 33, 37, 39, 43, etc.

"Quoted from The Times of May 30th, 1910.

also, it may be pointed out that such statements not only condemn the operations of our home organizations, but they presuppose a want of confidence in the colonial emigration commissioners as well.

Within recent years public opinion has gradually grown to view with considerable disfavor any form of British emigration proceeding to foreign countries. In 1907, the Imperial Conference gave expression to this feeling by passing the following resolution:

That it is desirable to encourage British emigrants to proceed to British Colonies rather than foreign countries: that the Imperial Government be requested to coöperate with any Colonies desiring immigrants in assisting suitable persons to emigrate that the Secretary of State for the Colonies be requested to nominate representatives of the Dominions to the committee of the Emigrants' Information Office.

In 1908, the question of emigration was discussed by the Poor Law Commission. Unfortunately, the ground necessarily covered by this inquiry was so extensive that little time could be spared for an adequate consideration of the factors governing the national exodus. The Majority Report of this Commission spoke of the value of emigration when supplemented with other reforms, but gave no hint as to the ways and means of organizing such a movement. The Minority Report was more informing. Whatever provisions are made for minimizing unemployment, it affirmed, there will always be a residuum of men and women who will be in want of work; for them, an emigration and immigration division will prove valuable. This division, it suggested, should develop the office now maintained by the Secretary of State for the Colonies in close communication with the responsible governments of other parts of the Empire. A Minister of Labor would direct this office, and his duties would include not only the control of aided but non-aided emigrants as well. So far as they go, the suggestions made by the Minority Commissioners are valuable, but, from such an authoritative body, a complete sketch of the machinery required to control both the emigration from home and the immigration to the Colonies would have proved welcome.

Finally, the subject of emigration was considered by the recent Imperial Conference of 1911. Mr. Burns, as President of the Local Government Board, said that since the last Conference the object of the resolution passed in 1907 had been, to a great extent, secured. In 1906, the total number of emigrants from the Mother Country was 194,671, of whom the different parts of the Empire took 105,178 or 54 per cent. In 1910, the numbers were 233,944 and 159,000 respectively, showing 68 per cent to the Empire. For the first four months of the year 1911 there was an increase over the corresponding period of 1910 of 23,000 or 29 per cent, and the Empire had taken the whole of that increase. Australia and New Zealand had received ten thousand more people in the first four months of 1911 than in the similar period of 1910, or 133 per cent increase. If the rate of increase for the first four months were continued for the whole of 1911, the total emigrants for Great Britain to all countries would amount, he said, to three hundred thousand, of whom, it was estimated, 230,000, or nearly 80 per cent, would go to different parts of the Empire, a generous contribution in quantity and quality from the Mother Country. In 1900, the percentage absorbed by the Empire of the total emigration from the United Kingdom was only 33 per cent. The increase from 33 per cent to 80 per cent was a justification of the excellent and increasing work in the right direction carried on by the now admirably organized Emigrants' Information Office at home. Moreover, it was generally admitted that the quality of the emigrants had also improved. The total estimated emigration of 300,000 for 1911 represented 60 per cent of the natural increase of the population of the United Kingdom as compared with 48 per cent in 1910 and 50 per cent in 1907. But for the saving in life represented by a lower death rate, and a much lower infant mortality, this emigration would be a very heavy drain on the United Kingdom. In ten years Scotland and Ireland combined had increased their population by 210,000, or less than the total emigration from Great Britain for the one year 1910. With a diminishing birth rate the Mother Country could not safely go beyond 300,000 a year, and if 80 per cent of these went to different parts of the Empire, the Conference would probably agree that this was as much as they could reasonably require. The Dominions were