CO885-(20-21) — Page 154

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :--

C.O. 885

20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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Trade, he is Secretary of the Agricultural Society, Assessment Commissioner, Secretary of the Union of Alberta Municipalities, and Secretary of the Associated Boards of Trade of Western Canada.

OTTAWA.

I got to Ottawa in the afternoon of Tuesday, the 7th of September. On the morning of Wednesday, the 8th, I called at the Immigration Building, and had a long and very interesting talk with Mr. Bogue Smart about child emigration. He is most enthusiastic about child emigration to Canada as at present conducted. He lays great stress on the qualification. The present system pre-supposes a certain period in England prior to emigration during which the children have been trained in certain elementary qualities and duties, and those in charge of the children have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with their characters and judging of their suitability for emigration to Canada. support any scheme which failed to secure such a preliminary period in England. He did not feel that he could I referred to Mrs. Close's scheme. He is well acquainted both with Mrs. Close and with her proposals. While he sympathised very sincerely with her aims and thought them admirable, he feared that the absence of this preliminary period in England was a serious flaw. He thought that another flaw lay in the fact that the children were not distributed immediately on arrival. By keeping them together in Canada for some years, however admirable her arrangements, Mrs. Close ran the very risk of branding the children as "institution" children which it was one of her objects to avoid, and which the Canadian Government on the other hand tried to avoid by having children distributed immediately on arrival, and so keeping the notion of an "institution" at any rate an ocean distant.

Under the existing system child emigrants come in from three sources; the Poor Law children (sent out by Boards of Guardians); industrial school children (sent out by the Home Office); and children sent out privately by recognised emigra tion societies. The Boards of Guardians and the Home Office work through the emigration societies, so that ultimately all the children reach Canada through this channel. They are sent direct to receiving homes maintained by the societies and from there are immediately distributed to families, through the medium of adop- tion, boarding, or indenture. Provincial legislation places the emigration society concerned in loco parentis to the child till he attains a certain age, and places upon the society the task of a periodical inspection of the child in the home to which he has gone, and of removing him if the home is found to be unsatisfactory. In the case of the Poor Law children there is the additional inspection undertaken by the Dominion Government at the request and expense of the Home Government. The Dominion Government also, through Mr. Bogue Smart and his assistants, exercises a general supervision over the fulfilment by the societies of their responsi- bilities towards the children. This supervision is mainly exercised by a periodical inspection of the receiving homes, when all the records and accounts and the reports of the Society's inspectors are open to the officer of the Dominion Government. Such inspection of the receiving homes is carried out not less than once a year, generally more frequently. The Dominion officials find no difficulty in satisfying themselves whether the societies are carrying out their duties towards the children.

Mr. Smart took me carefully over his system of reports on Poor Law children and his records, and I was much impressed by the carefulness and minuteness of the system. He explained that the individual reports are retained until a volume of 250 or 300 has been collected, and that the volume is then sent in duplicate to the Local Government Board. number, he did not think that this could cause any undue delay in the transmission As it takes only about a month to collect this of the reports to England. He said that, if he were called on to discriminate between the children arriving in Canada, he would say that the Poor Law children were the best, the industrial school children next, and the emigration society or private homes children next. But all were good, and he claimed confidently that

95 per cent., or even more, of those who came were satisfactory.

I told him that I had read in the papers that Dr. Gray, the Warden of Brad- field, had acquired land near Calgary, with the object of forming an agricultural training school for public school boys wishing to farm in Canada. Mr. Bogue Smart thought it would be much wiser and more practical to let the individual boys get their actual training by working as ordinary hands on a farm, and feared that, without experience of this nature, they would probably develop into a com- paratively helpless brand of "spoon-fed" farmers.

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During my absence in the west, Mr. Blake Robertson, the Assistant Superinten- dent of Immigration, had been through the Canada "Circular" and "Handbook.” He had only corrections to suggest in one or two small matters of detail. In general he thought that the books were an accurate, fair, and useful account of the situation.

Mr. Cory and Mr. Scott were both away from Ottawa.

I left for Montreal in the afternoon of the 8th of September.

MONTREAL.

On Thursday, the 9th, I called at the Board of Trade, and saw the Assistant Secretary, the Secretary being absent in Australia. He took the view of the func tions of his Board taken by the secretaries of the other larger Boards of Trade that I had visited, and declined to deal with questions of employment in the different callings. We had a general conversation on financial and industrial conditions in Canada, in the course of which he expressed the opinion that the recovery from the slump of 1907, though definite, was very slow.

I next called at the office of Mr. Grigg, the British Trade Commissioner to the Dominion of Canada. The Commissioner himself was away, but I had an interest- ing talk with his son, who is his assistant. The nature of his functions does not enable the Commissioner to pose as an expert as to the demand for labour in the various trades and callings. But it does enable him to advise as to the prospects of a man wishing to come out with capital to lay out in business, and Mr. Grigg was very keen that any emigrant of this class should be referred to him. He consented to act as a local correspondent of the Emigrants' Information Office.

The afternoon I spent at the Angus shops of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, where in busy times from 5,000 to 6,000 men are employed. For some reason or other they were rather slack at the time of my visit and were only employ- ing 2,000 or 3,000. I had a talk with the superintendent of the locomotive building. He said that, as a rule, they had no difficulty in getting all the men they wanted. They had experienced some difficulty in the boom of 1906-7, but not since. They got a certain number of Englishmen, but they were very slow, as a rule, in com- parison with Canadian workmen. He said he thought it took them about a couple of years to get over this defect and over the tendency to talk about the way in which they had been accustomed to do things in England.

QUEBEC.

I travelled by night to Quebec, and arrived there early on Friday morning, the 10th of September. I went down to the Immigration Building and saw Captain le Bel, the Provincial Immigration Agent. He undertook to act as a local corres- pondent of the Emigrants' Information Office. I then went out to the Immigration Hospital, about two miles from the town. hospital is used, not only as a hospital proper, but also as a place of detention Dr. Pagé himself took me round. The for all immigrants who are to be sent back forthwith or whose cases are under consideration. Cases of rejection by the United States officials in Quebec or cases in which they deem further enquiry necessary are also accommodated at the hospital. I gathered that such cases often ran to a considerable number, and that at times there was in consequence great pressure on the accommodation available. Every- thing is done on business lines. There is no free accommodation. The present charges are 75 cents a day for any inmate requiring medical attention, and 50 cents a day for anyone else, such as persons accompanying a sick immigrant or persons detained on some such ground as lack of entrance money. These charges do not pay, and are to be raised to $1.25 and 75 cents a day respectively. The sums due are recovered by the Government from the shipping company who brought the particular immigrant. The Government have no money dealings with the immi- grant himself. Whether the shipping company eventually recover from the immi- grant, and what steps they take to do so, the Government does not enquire and does not regard as its concern. at the time of my visit.

There was a goodly crowd of detained inimigrants A large number of them were United States cases. went amongst them, and Dr. Pagé showed me a typical case of trachoma in a Greek boy. He allowed me to examine a number of files taken at random in his office. I was impressed by the care with which he examined the medical questions involved in doubtful cases. acceptance or rejection. He is, of course, not responsible for any enquiries in cases There was evidently nothing slipshod about their in which the grounds of detention are other than medical. In such cases he simply