Page:State directed emigration.djvu/22

 initiative. The predominant economical teaching then and since has been that emigration is exclusively the concern of individuals. But this is a mistake. For, those who would be best away cannot go for want of cash, and were such helped to leave there would be a better chance of livelihood here for others who have a little money they would prefer employing where they were born, if only pressure of competition, the struggle for life, could be moderated. Besides, State directed emigration is a logical corollary of free trade. That system continually deprives bodies of British workmen of employment, in the interest, it is contended, of the community. Economy attained by employing foreign workmen who will take less wages, can scarcely be effective, so far as the community is concerned, unless the burden of supporting those who have been dismissed and their dependents is removed by transplanting such as cannot go unaided, to fresh fields of labour. Failing that supplemental operation, what happens is, two sets of hands are supported instead of one set. This can be made plain by an example.

London consumes coal sea-borne from Northumberland and Durham in value about two millions sterling annually, the whole of which, except a fraction of royalty paid to the lords of the soil, who spend that fraction falling to them in keeping up establishments to the profit of the community, is paid as "wages" to colliers, engineers, labourers, railway men, sailors, brokers, clerks, carriers, foremen, merchants. Upon the two million pounds all these people and their families (perhaps fifty thousand souls) live. To enable them to live the coal is sold at (say) twelve shillings per ton f.o.b. Thames. In the Pas de Calais there are coal formations. Next week an enormous vein fifty feet thick lying close to ground is tapped, and France finds she can supply all London with profit to herself at eight shillings per ton. The result of opening this door "as widely as possible" (to quote Mr. Bright) must be chômage of the considerable home population who derive their livelihood from the extraction and sale of the North country coal, henceforward to be left in the pit. Such few among them as possess means to do so may emigrate with their capital to France or America. The bulk must perforce stay here, and, as they could not be killed out of the way, the cost of maintaining them would have to be added to the sum paid by Londoners for French coal before it could be ascertained whether Great Britain gained by the revolution. Who can doubt that