Delphi complete works of.., p.550
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 550
A similar experiment, but with a much larger measure of success, was presently tried out in New Zealand. It was characteristic of the lack of economic foresight of the laissez-faire period that the British Government tried hard for many years not to own or annex or colonize New Zealand. The beautiful “long white cloud” lay almost untenanted and quite unclaimed — a land of wonderful fertility and resources, equal in area to Great Britain, and occupied only by some 120,000 natives. The claim of the Maori was as great and as small as that of any other savages who occupy, to the extent of about one person to a square mile, territory which they can only utilize to a fraction of its worth and the resources of which they cannot even understand. But by an Act of Parliament of 1817 England had expressly denied all sovereignty over the islands. Even when a New Zealand Association was formed (1837) every possible objection and hindrance was raised and a bill to incorporate the association was rejected by Parliament. Meantime individual settlers had established themselves here and there, buying land in great blocks for hatchets, guns and beads. There came also traders and others of doubtful character. The missionaries of the Church of England and of the dissenting bodies were at work among the natives, and had in the course of their ministrations secured large tracts of land. They and their supporters at home were against all colonization, preferring the vision of the Christianized savage reclaimed from his own peculiar wickednesses, such as cannibalism, without adopting those of civilization. Already the new fascination of using gunpowder in fighting was decimating the Maori.
Against all these false values the colonization scheme had to make its way. Luckily the news that the French were about to establish a sovereignty caused the British Government to make a right-about-face in policy. A treaty made at Waitanga in 1840, and signed by 512 native chiefs, established the British claim. Meantime the New Zealand Association, failing a special charter, had turned itself into a stock company, collected £100,000 and sent out (1839) ships with agents to purchase lands for its settlements. It won Gibbon Wakefield, who had first formed the New Zealand Association, and his brother Colonel Wakefield was in charge of the first expedition. The whole scheme of colonization thus set on foot was based on Wakefield’s essential idea of free transit for emigrants, work by emigrants for wages, and the purchase of land by the company at first out of subscription funds and later out of receipts. But the general plan was much confused in the details of its operation, so that the scheme and its subdivisions were in the end neither altogether governmental nor philanthropic or commercial. Though it came to an end in 1852 with the Act organizing the government of New Zealand, it was certainly far from being a failure. The company in its first year (1839-40) brought out 1,350 immigrants. Labourers going out to work for wages were carried free. Four years later emigration to New Zealand amounted to nearly 9,000 a year. A branch of the parent company settled New Plymouth with 532 emigrants in one year. A more important offshoot was the Presbyterian settlement at Dunedin organized in 1845. Its originators bought 144,000 acres from the New Zealand Company and the settlers landed at Otago in 1848. By 1854 there was a population of 2,400, and a town of Dunedin so named, in fond memory of Edinburgh, with 700 people and the outline of a college. Most completely organized was the settlement at Canterbury (1850). This was to be a true Wakefield colony. Land was to be sold at a fixed price of £3 per acre; of the money received ten shillings was to go to the New Zealand Company as original purchaser of the land, ten shillings to make roads, etc.; £1 to the Church and education and finally £1 — or one-third of the money paid — became a fund to bring out more emigrants. The Canterbury Association remained in operation as a colonizing scheme till 1853. In all, about 13,000 immigrants were assisted in coming to the colony; others came by themselves, so that by the year 1852, when the various colonization schemes terminated, there was a white population in New Zealand of 31,000. Great difficulties had been encountered. Of the vast purchases made for the New Zealand Company by Colonel Wakefield, amounting to 20,000,000 acres, a great part was declared irregular and void, and the claim cut to 320,000 acres. In many cases, as at Canterbury, the price put on the land was too high to effect a wide enough sale. At Dunedin the receipts were too low to pay for the necessary operation of settlement. In the final adjustment of debit and credit the Government of New Zealand wound up the land company by paying it £200,000 in settlement of its claim.
To many people, and as told in many of the books, the South Australian and New Zealand experiments appear as a mere curiosity of colonial history. They passed out of public attention and public policy. The American homestead system, and the enormous migration which seemed to crown it with success, obscured the real superiority of the Wakefield plan. The homestead system is for those who have, but the Wakefield system is for those who have not. For the American farmer of the year 1900 moving into Saskatchewan with a carload lot of machinery and furniture and a capital and credit of $1,000 per head for each of his family, the homestead system supplies exactly the magnet needed. The lure of the land, the magic of property are embodied in it. But for the workless man in the streets of London or Glasgow, what has the homestead system to say? Nothing.
And to-day the whole problem of migration is the problem of the workless man. If we want to solve it we must turn back to the plans and schemes of John Galt and George Angas and Gibbon Wakefield.
By the time of the American Civil War and the Homestead Act (1862) and the great western movement which followed the war, the period of systematic colonization was at an end. Henceforth “assisted migration” was only on a minor scale, as a form of philanthropy, not as a national policy. It was in the period from 1860 to 1900 that Great Britain should have triumphed in a migration and settlement policy. The United States for four years was overwhelmed with the terrific struggle of the Civil War. If England had known enough to build a Pacific railway, to open up the West and British Columbia, to put settlers in to the full extent of the British surplus population and with full power of British capital and to reach across the ocean to the Orient, the economic consequences would have been colossal. But England knew nothing of the sort. The United States recovered rapidly from the war and took up with characteristic energy the western movement of settlement interrupted (though never quite terminated) by the conflict. The Central Union Pacific route opened transcontinental traffic in 1869. The Northern Pacific to Portland (Oregon), the Southern Pacific linking New Orleans to San Francisco, and the Santa Fe route from centre to south-west were completed within fifteen years more. What seemed a boundless area of new land was thus available. The opening of the great wheat plains of Minnesota and the Dakotas challenged the invention of the incomparable machinery that gave them their full meaning. Immigration poured over the west in a flood. Between the end of the Civil War and the close of the century (1865-1900), migration from Europe to the United States amounted in all to 12,635,000. There was an annual average of over 300,000. From the British Isles the whole total of migration during this period was 9,767,817, and of this total no less than 6,914,303 went to the United States, to Canada only 1,092,001.
Look at some of the notable years. The figures are almost pathetic. The year 1870 — the year of the foundation of the province of Manitoba — saw 196,000 British people migrate to the United States and only 35,000 to British America. In 1881 — with the Manitoba boom “booming” — 307,000 British went to the United States, 34,000 to British America. In 1886, the year of the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway from coast to coast, only 30,000 came to British America and 238,000 to the United States. There is no break in the record till the century turned and passed. The economic reason for this is all too clear in retrospect. When Canada took over the North-west in 1869 it had not the power, the capital, the wealth to develop it. All Canadians read and admire the story of the opening of the great North-west, a wonderful story of courage and confidence — heroic, considering the limited numbers and the limited means of the people who achieved it. But in the cold light of economic analysis, how utterly inadequate were the means adopted as compared with the means that lay ready to hand. England, with the boundless capital of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties, could have sent in an army of contractors and workers, as they were sent over half the world, and built the railway with a northern section of it to Prince Rupert, and followed it with 200,000 settlers a year.
Let it be observed what happened when the inadequate Dominion of Canada tried to open the west. The first opening led to the Manitoba Land Boom — which was quite sound at the base — and the collapse of the boom — which was needless, and a stagnation of twenty years. The transfer of the North-west from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada was followed by the creation of the province of Manitoba in 1870. It contained only 12,000 inhabitants, of whom 558 were Indians and 9,840 half-breeds. Access was difficult and little was known of the fertility of the country. For years neither knowledge nor capital was forthcoming. After the opening of the province the population only rose to 36,000 in 1876. But after that the establishment of rail connection with St. Paul and the definite prospect (1881) of a Canadian Pacific Railway started a movement of migration from the older provinces, and a sudden realization of the possibilities of the North-west that precipitated the Manitoba Boom of 1881-3. Settlers flocked in. There was apparently the sudden miracle of occupation for all, credit for all, fortune for all. Town lots were staked out for miles into the prairie. The population of Winnipeg rose to 10,000 in 1881 and nearly 20,000 two years later. Adjacent settlements of a few shacks and tepees turned into “cities”. Land at Portage la Prairie rose from two dollars and a half an acre to sixty dollars.
The Manitoba Boom collapsed in 1883. The banks and others who had lent money called it in: credit came to an end, and the incipient settlement of the North-west collapsed like a balloon without gas. It was explained at the time, and ever since, that the movement had been too rapid and that a check was bound to come. This is economic nonsense. The movement was too slow. The rosiest estimates of the boom time fell far short of the reality. Winnipeg, with its present population of 300,000, is an actuality and could have been an actuality a quarter of a century sooner. 380,639 homestead settlers took up land in Western Canada between 1904 and 1914. They could just as well have gone in between 1884 and 1894, when only 35,979 homestead entries were made. The wheat crop of Canada reached a record of 450,000,000 bushels in 1928. The land was there to grow it in 1884. There are over 2,000,000 people living in the prairie provinces to-day: the means for their support were all there in 1884. All that was needed was to keep the land boom going with more and more capital. Nowadays it is related in derision that there were forty real estate offices in Portage la Prairie in 1882. So there should have been. They needed them, with half a continent to divide up. The fault is not that the real estate offices were opened, but that they ever had to be closed.
The opening years of this century till the War showed a better record. The volume of British emigration was greater than ever, a total of 6,303,050 people for the years 1900-13 inclusive, or an annual average of 484,850. But the situation was entirely changed in that a much greater part of it than ever before since the beginning of responsible government was a migration from the British Isles to the British Dominions. In these fourteen years 3,416,587 British immigrants went to the United States, 430,333 to Australia, 425,659 to South Africa, and to Canada a total of 1,625,054. If we add to this that immigrants were coming into the North-west of Canada from the United States at the rate of about 100,000 a year we can see that the balance had turned. The free land in the United States really suitable for homestead farming was by this time practically used up. Much of the land first settled in the American West had deteriorated from over use and under fertilization. The American farmers moved, bag and baggage, into Canada. In the year 1897 only 730 persons had entered the North-west as settlers from the United States; in 1900 there were 15,000; in 1911 the entry reached 100,000 and in 1913 the record mark of 139,000 immigrants. What happened then showed the homestead system at its best, the conditions being the only ones under which in modern surroundings it is of value. The Americans who joined in the “invasion” of the West were people of substance. They paid their own transport and brought their own goods. The Canadian Government estimated that with each man, woman and child there came into the West a thousand dollars’ worth of money and goods. The effect brought about thus under conditions of the purely private initiative of individual people is exactly what could be done under a colonization scheme of migration to-day. It represented the union of immigrants and capital with the resources of fertile territory, the co-ordination of the factors of land, labour and capital — the trinity in whose power early economists saw the very source and origin of wealth.
The American invasion slackened and ended. Then the War came, and at its close the world had changed. All the world henceforth thought in terms of debts and deficits and unemployment. The search for work that followed demobilization and the crash of war prices in 1920 made it seem as if every working man was the rival and enemy of every other: as if “work” was a form of property or asset divided up among claimants and competitors. Thus the whole aspect of migration was soon discoloured with the jaundice of false economic teaching as to the relation of labour to wealth. The United States, to keep its “labour market” to itself, adopted under its quota laws a policy of partial exclusion. In all the Dominions the labour parties are prejudiced against immigrations. Unable to look any further than to the immediate distress of present unemployment, they do not see that perhaps the remedy for unemployment is to bring in more labourers — provided the capital comes with them.
As a result of this, all the various attempts at assisted immigration in the Empire since the War have been half-hearted, only partially successful, and on too small a scale to count for anything. Much was expected after the War. An Overseas Settlement Committee was instituted (1917) and free ocean passages secured for ex-service men and their families. Under this plan in four years of operation 86,000 persons migrated out of Great Britain — 28,000 to Canada, 34,000 to Australia, 12,000 to New Zealand and about 6,000 to South Africa. But the scheme was obviously of no permanent value unless conjoined with some positive action for placing the emigrants and supplying capital to work with them. A Colonial Office conference in London in 1921 recommended that the Governments of Great Britain and the Dominions should co-operate in a policy of assisted settlement. The conference of prime ministers accepted and endorsed the suggestion. So did everybody. The difficulty was to give it effect. The division of jurisdiction brought about by the disintegration of the Empire left no one with complete control. As a result the Empire Settlement Act of 1922, though admirable in principle, is almost abortive in operation. By this Act the British Government authorizes the Secretary of State to join in any plan of assisted migration with any Dominion Government or with public or private authorities in Great Britain or the Dominions to the extent of bearing half the cost of the enterprise. The money expended from the British exchequer must not be more than £3,000,000 in any one year. The Act is to last till 1937.
In the eight years that have followed the adoption of the Act a number of schemes have been entered into as between the British Government and those of the Commonwealth of Australia — the states of Western Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales, the Dominion of Canada and certain organizations in South Africa. The agreements provided for assisted ocean passages which, in the case of Canada, were confined to farm labourers and domestic servants: a stipulation which reminds us that “hired men” and “hired help” are of the class of unorganized labour and cannot protest. Skilled labour in Canada holds as jealously as elsewhere to the idea that a new-comer steals the job of the man on the spot. Western Australia undertook to settle 75,000 people in three years and to raise and spend £6,000,000, of which the Imperial Government was to pay one-third of the interest for five years. Victoria was to raise £3,000,000 and at once to settle 2,000 persons as owners and occupiers of farms. The Canadian Government agreed to provide improved farms for 3,000 families. An agreement on a much greater scale was arranged in 1925 as between Australia and Great Britain. This was to settle 450,000 immigrants in the Commonwealth in ten years. For these Australia was to raise in total loans, including those already guaranteed for the states, the sum of £34,000,000 and the Imperial Government to contribute £130,000 for each £750,000 raised in the Commonwealth. In South Africa a Settlers Association was organized to co-operate with the British Government in assisted passages, loans for settlers and the creation of training farms. Minor arrangements were made by the Imperial Settlement Act with the Canadian Pacific Railway, with the Scottish Immigrant Aid Society and other bodies.
It would be unfair to belittle the importance of the Empire Settlement Act. The underlying principle of co-operation and union of resources rests on the true basis of Imperial integration. But the results thus far fall far short of anticipations, and as compared with the vast problem of Empire migration, with the vast scale of our national resources and the present appalling devastation of unemployment — compared, in other words, with the work to be done — the results are almost insignificant. In five years of operation the Victorian scheme only established 401 families and the New South Wales plan 327. The Western Australian group settlement came to an end. It was found that the cost of establishing a farm in Australia is £1,500 and that this cost was entirely prohibitive. The settler could stay in London and live on the interest of this without going to Australia at all. New Brunswick had placed about 200 families by the end of 1929. The Canadian Government supplied 2,500 specially trained British hired men to western farmers. The 1928 experiment of sending 8,000 British workers, mostly from the coal mines, to help with the harvest work in the Canadian North-west was about as successful as would be the sending of 8,000 Canadian farmers to help with the mines.
