MR G. A. SALA ON LABOUR IN AUSTRALIA.
Mr G. A. Sala, recently addressing the representative of an Australian journal, said: ‘I recognise that labour is needed everywhere in Australia—more working men, more domestic servants, more young men, more intelligent men, more Scotsmen—as many more as ever you like. I think I have also been able to discern the people who are not required here. These are the black-sheep of good families, loafers, idlers, young men who come out and spend their money, drift into dissolute habits, get remittances to take them home again, where they do nothing but abuse the colonies, of which they know nothing, and in which their presence was likely to do more harm than good. I have been preaching lay sermons for a good many years; and were I not too old and too wicked, I would get into some pulpit at home and preach as a minister, for certainly ministers have more influence over their congregations than lecturers have over audiences. I would say to my hearers: “My capable, hard-working, shrewd, intelligent brethren, go out to Australia. You and your wives and your children, go out, work hard; and be assured that, with or without capital, you will, by hard working, frugality, and sobriety, greatly better your condition. Not only that, but you will also better those whom you leave behind. You will give more and more backbone, more and more muscle, more and more red blood, to the body politic of Australia.” But I would also add: “My idle brethren, my stupid brethren, my wicked, needy brethren, my vicious brethren, my drunken brethren, stop at home and gravitate to your natural refuge, the poorhouse. Do not go out to Australia to become a nuisance and a pest there.” Then, in more forbearing language, I would amicably advise young men in England of mere clerical attainments, who can at best only hope to be bookkeepers or shop assistants, to think twice, nay thrice, before they travel thirteen thousand miles to find a country where the native youths equal, if they do not excel them in the ability demanded by the requirements of the counting-house and shop-counter.’
FOREIGN COMPETITION.
Sir John Brown, of the well-known firm of John Brown & Co., has said that he ‘feared England had almost, if not altogether reached the summit of her prosperity, and that she must not again look for any material prosperity such as the last thirty or forty years had displayed.’ English trade was being nibbled right and left by Germany, Austria, Prussia, and the United States. Illustrating this, Sir John stated that his large ship-building Company at Hull had recently taken their supplies of steel plates from Germany at prices varying from ten shillings to twenty shillings per ton below the prices at which Sheffield could supply the material. The same was true of ship-building firms at Newcastle and other places. Notwithstanding the cost of carriage, rails were sent more cheaply from Germany, by Antwerp and the German Ocean, to Hull and Newcastle than they could be made in England. A process of cold-rolling is known only to certain French and American houses; and it is curious, but not altogether creditable to ourselves, that steel is sent to Paris to be cold-rolled, and is afterwards returned to this country.
BONNIE DRYFE.
Bonnie Dryfe, my native stream,
I have loved thee lang and dearly,
Glancing in the sunny beam,
Glinting through the bracken clearly.
Wayward, wandering, mountain bairn,