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Sixth Day. 25 April 1907.

people of the Mother Country, and I think he suggested passively to divert people who intended to go elsewhere to places within the British Empire. I can only say that the emigrant decides this in the main practically for himself, and to the extent that we would over-persuade him in making up his mind say, to go to Canada as against Australia or New Zealand, to that extent we would give his mind a bias in a direction that we ought not. Mr. DEAKIN : No one suggested that. Mr. BURNS : No, the business, we think, of the Home Government is that as all the Colonies are competing for emigrants and settlers practically of the same type, what we have to do is to take the claims as set forth by the Agents-General themselves who want those claims for labour submitted to the Old Country. It is the business of the Agents-General and the Home Government to co-operate with each other as to where, how, and in what best way that information can be placed "before intending settlers and emigrants, and I can assure the Conference that efficient though the steps of the Board have been in the past,*we hope considerably to improve upon our present methods and agencies by means of which the common desire of this Conference can be secured. Now, may T say a word about the type of emigrant. I know that Mr. Deakin, and also Dr. Jameson, Mr. Moor, General Botha, and Sir Joseph Ward, and I know it from practical observation in Canada on the subject— want the same type of settler and emigrant. They want the farmer, they want the good skilled labourer, they want the skilled handy-man, they want the domestic servant, and, in many cases, they want the platelayer, and the heavy lifter, and the man whose physique is adapted to the opening pioneer work of constructing public and private works on a big scale in new countries. You also want skilled artizans, mainly of the building trades. Now, in this particular matter, the Colonies, to a great extent, can be helped by the Old Country, because at this moment we have, I am sorry to say, through reasons that I need not go into, a very large number of men in the building trade who are slack of employment. We also have, proportionately to the Colonies, more surplus unskilled labourers than any of the Colonies possess, and it does seem to me that if those men in the building trades, who are a type of men that many of the Colonies pre-eminently want in opening up new countries, were more closely informed as to the colonial requirements of labour, we should see a very considerable number of the men of the building and similar trades seeking work in Colonies where their work would perhaps be for the moment better, and perhaps -ultimately more regular than it is now. But the supply of labour must flow without preference or pressure on the choice of the individual emigrant to wherever he chooses to go. It is interesting that this Conference should know that in the last two or three years when emigration from the Old Country has gone up enormously by all the agencies, whether it be distress committees, or boards of guardians, or private or public bodies, or trade unions, or any other association, and there are nearly 1,000 agencies in this country taking directly or indirectly an active part in sending people out of the country, mainly to the Colonies; 95 or 97 per cent, of the total people that have left through private, public, or semi-public agencies the Mother Country for external Dominions have gone to Canada or to the other Colonies. But the enormous volume of emigration that has gone to the United States, relatively is not as great as it was, and is rapidly diminishing. For instance, only a few years ago, and this Sir Wilfrid Laurier will be pleased to hear, in 1888 Canada had 11 per cent, of the emigrants that left the Mother Country, and America had 72 per cent.; today Canada has 31 per cent, and America 47 per cent, of the total. So that

Emigration. (Mr. Burns.)