SECTION II.

GRANT OF FREE PASSAGES TO EX-SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN.

The Government scheme for granting free passages to this class of settler was continued throughout the year. Statistics regarding the scheme are given in Part II. Applications for passages under the scheme were allowed up to the 31st December, 1921. Those who applied before that date may be approved, and will, if approved, be at liberty to avail themselves of the privilege of the scheme up to the 31st December, 1922.

By the 31st December, 1922, all ex-service men and women who desire the privilege of free passages will have had ample opportunity to avail themselves of it. There is, therefore, no reason why the present scheme should be extended for any further period.

The Committee have received evidence, in numerous letters from successful settlers, in the reports from Local Employment Committees, and in testimony from private and public sources overseas, that the scheme has achieved a large measure of success. They believe, however, that the results obtained will be even more satisfactory when there is in existence a system of effective co-operation between the Governments of the Empire in the development of a policy of Empire Settlement.

Improvements are gradually being made in the arrangements of the Oversea Governments for selecting settlers, deciding as to their medical suitability, welcoming, training and placing them upon the land overseas. These matters are dealt with in other paragraphs of this Report, and it is unnecessary at this point to do more than emphasise the view of the Committee that much still remains to be done before the arrangements can be regarded as wholly satisfactory.

As the date of the Armistice recedes, the special case of the exservice man and woman merges in the general problem of oversea settlement. For this, youth and adaptability (see Section III (a)) are amongst the most important qualifications. From now onwards the number of ex-service persons who proceed overseas will tend to diminish, and the problem will be increasingly one of providing openings for the rising generation who were too young for service during the war.

SECTION III.

TRAINING.

The problem of State-aided Empire settlement is that of training sufficient numbers of the population of this country, which is in the main town-bred and industrial, in such a manner as to fit them for life in the Dominions, where the population is largely country-bred and agricultural, and where the principal openings lie in the direction of agricultural development. The provision of suitable training is the key to the whole problem. That training can, of course, be acquired (B 3/158)

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most easily by the young, and the Committee are convinced of the great importance of encouraging the settlement in the Dominions both of children (see Section V), who go out so young that their education has to be completed overseas, and also of boys and girls at the school-leaving age, and from that age up to 18 or even 20.

(a) The Juvenile Branch of the Ministry of Labour has drawn special attention to the importance, in the interest of the rising generation in this country, of encouraging youthful migration, especially at the school-leaving age, i.e., before children have become accustomed to industrial city life and have acquired habits and tastes which increase the difficulty of making a fresh start overseas. Nearly half a million boys and girls leave school each year within the United Kingdom in search of occupation. Before the war there was in ordinary circumstances some kind of work, though not infrequently of a "blind alley nature, for each boy and girl who left school. But apart altogether from the evils of "blind alley" occupations, there is grave reason to fear that in the future many will leave school for whom there will exist no opening at all in this country. If suitable work does not exist within these shores for those who leave school during the next decade, a future must be found for them outside this country, and preferably within the Empire.

It is probable that the Boy Scouts Association, with whom the Committee are in touch, will be able to give valuable assistance in connection with youthful migration.

Some rudiments of the training necessary for the youthful migrant might be acquired in the schools of this country. But the chief training should be overseas.

(b) Every effort should be made to provide openings upon the land overseas for youths in secondary and public schools (the former usually day schools and the latter usually boarding schools). Such youths, like many other classes of the community, experience great difficulty in finding suitable careers in this country. Few of them have capital of their own; all have the advantage of long education, as the leavingage at such schools varies from 16 to 18. In some cases they have received special training in agriculture.

This matter was first brought to the notice of the Committee in 1920 by a Resolution of the Secondary Schools Headmasters' Employment Committee, which invited their co-operation in finding employment for boys anxious to proceed overseas and obtain the training necessary to fit them for a farming life. Throughout 1921 the desirability of providing openings of this kind for public school boys has been urged upon the Committee by the authorities of Christ's Hospital, a school which provides training in practical and scientific agriculture, as well as in all kinds of handicraft. This school was visited in the course of the summer by representatives of the Dominions, including the High Commissioner for Canada, and also by the Vice-Chairman of the Oversea Settlement Committee. There is general agreement that this and other similar schools, indeed all secondary and public schools throughout the country, could provide the Dominions with admirable

recruits for their farming population, provided that the difficulty of want of capital can be overcome. This difficulty could in some degree be met by applying to suitable applicants from secondary and public schools the scheme put forward at the February Conference and approved by the Conference of Prime Ministers for assisting land settlers with advances up to a maximum of £300.

The question of providing openings for youths in secondary and public schools has also been taken up with certain private organisations, such as Australian Farms, Ltd., the 1820 Memorial Settlers' Association of South Africa, &c. The Committee are anxious to do all in their power to facilitate and encourage settlement of this nature.

(c) In the case of adults, especially those who have had no previous experience of agriculture, a brief period, say, three or four weeks, of preliminary testing immediately prior to departure from this country would be advisable. The object of this testing would be to eliminate the temperamentally unfit, and the Committee are anxious that a system of this kind should be tried by the Oversea Governments, or by His Majesty's Government acting in co-operation with those Governments. They believe that the Hollesley Bay Farm Colony in Suffolk, which can accommodate between 400 and 450 farm pupils, and should thus allow of the testing of about 5,000 pupils annually, would be suitable for this purpose. The system could, of course, be extended if found to work well in practice.

It is essential that ample opportunities for training should be available overseas. The new arrival who intends to work upon the land, if he is assisted in finding work by the Oversea Immigration Authorities, is usually sent to an approved private farm. But it is unlikely that a sufficient number of such farms will be available to deal with anything in excess of the present flow of migration, and it seems desirable that this method of training should be supplemented by the provision of Government training farms. It has been suggested by the Director of Migration and Settlement for Australia and by other authorities that the provision and maintenance of such farms would commend itself to certain of the Oversea Governments as a suitable method of co-operation with the Government of the United Kingdom in carrying into effect the policy approved by the Conference of Prime Ministers. If such a policy were adopted, new arrivals could proceed direct to one of the Government farms, and would thus avoid the risk, which they now run, of being attracted into industrial town life whilst awaiting the opportunity of settling on the land.

(d) The foregoing paragraphs have special reference to the training of young men, who will in most cases presumably be unmarried. The provision of opportunities for training and land settlement for married men without capital or experience, more especially if they have large and young families, is a more complex problem. Not only is it harder for older men to adapt themselves to work upon the land, but hitherto it has as a general rule been difficult, if not impossible, for such of them as are married to earn enough to support their wives and families whilst they themselves are undergoing their training. Those who

have friends or relations already settled overseas and willing to receive them and train them should be able to tide over the period of training successfully. The difficulties of those who have not these advantages are very great and may best be illustrated by a concrete example.

The case is that of an ex-Sergeant Instructor, aged about 40, married, with five children, three boys and two girls, from five to fifteen years old. He applied for free passages to Australia under the Government scheme, intimating that he had worked for fifteen years as a mechanic and wished, if possible, to go on the land, but had had no experience. He and his family were approved as settlers by the Australian Authorities, were granted passages by His Majesty's Government and proceeded in 1919 to one of the largest cities in Australia.

In a letter to the Committee, written some months after arrival overseas, he reported that on the day after his arrival he was offered a job as a labourer with a local firm, and "my family being heavy I took the job, rather than be loafing about the Immigration Office and watching my little store of capital dwindle-I had £40 in the State Savings Bank." After three weeks he replied to an advertisement in a local paper and got a better job as a mechanic in the city, under a firm with whom he and his son were still at work at the time of writing. The letter continues :

So much for my career up to date, but I suppose you will have many complaints and I want to add mine to the total, not, believe me, with any spirit of grumbling, but with the intention of benefiting others.

When I first thought of coming out, I and my wife wanted to get on the land, not as so many people do, thinking that money would be picked up for stooping, but because we have, after many years of industrialism, come to the conclusion that the people who live on the soil are better off in body and mind, and I did want to bring my children up to some kind of farming life in order to give them that chance.

"But I was without either capital or experience, and as soon as I said so I was just told that I must put the idea away for I simply couldn't get a job that would keep my family. I said we weren't afraid of hard work and my wife and two eldest children would be able to do something, but I could get no satisfaction, so we just had to accept things as they are.

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Cannot something be done to help people like me who have a sincere desire for the soil? I am not a boy who doesn't know his own mind, and I know all about the discomforts of life on the land and am prepared to put up with them, if I could only get there. Surely it would be better for both us and the country if we were given a chance in the open, instead of being herded together in the cities which are already over-populated."

It is only reasonable that family men who have a desire for the soil should have a chance of settling and bringing up their children upon it, and no scheme of State-aided settlement will be so successful as it should be unless it affords openings upon the land to suitable settlers of this class. The whole problem is that of tiding over the preliminary period-one or even two years-of training.

SECTION IV.

WOMEN.

(a) The 1921 Census returns for England and Wales show an excess of women over men of 1,702,802 (of whom about half are between the ages of 15 and 45), corresponding to a ratio of 1,095 women to every 1,000 men. These figures make it clear that it is desirable to encourage the migration to the Dominions, where there is still some surplus of males, of the largest number of women for whom suitable employment can be found overseas. Unfortunately, the difficulties attendant on the migration of women are greater than in the case of men or children, and as a general rule there is a large excess of men over women in the volume of migration from this country.

It is true that recent Board of Trade returns show a small surplus of adult female over adult male migration. The numbers for the year 1920 were, in round figures, females 125,000, and males 115,000, and for the first nine months of 1921, females 71,000, males 67,000. The explanation is, however, that many of the women included in the returns for female migration during the last two years are wives and dependants of members of Oversea Forces. Only in exceptional cases, i.e., when they travelled as ordinary passengers, were members of those Forces included in the Board of Trade returns. On the other hand, their wives and dependants, who usually travelled on ordinary steamers, may be presumed for the most part to have been included.

About 13,000 adult men and 7,500 adult women proceeded overseas during 1921 under the Government Free Passage Scheme. Under that scheme free passages are available to the following classes of women, viz., women of the war services, widows of ex-service men, and wives and other dependants of ex-service men who avail themselves of the privilege. After the termination of this scheme, which of course applies only to a small part of the female population, it will, owing to the high cost of passages, be absolutely impossible for the ordinary woman worker to proceed overseas except in the comparatively few cases in which it may be possible to obtain assistance from the depleted funds at the disposal of voluntary and philanthropic societies.

In these circumstances, the Oversea Settlement Committee are convinced that any policy of co-operation in Empire settlement which may be adopted by the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions should include provision for a vigorous policy of State aid and encouragement of female migration.

The one great, and indeed unlimited, opening for women overseas is domestic employment. The domestic assistance required overseas is not that of the specialised parlour-maid or house-maid of whom the supply in this country is insufficient to meet the demand, but of the domestic help who is willing to take her share in all the work required in the home. It is difficult to exaggerate the acuteness of the need for women of this kind throughout the Dominions. The birth rate is being affected in the country districts, and the sowing and harvesting of the crops is being interfered with by the lack of domestic help in the farmer's home.