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    82 MIDDLE-CLASS FEMALE EMIGRATION

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    _ V Some Years Ago The Fishermen Of A Sm...

    the ' reach , of the great mass of marriageable young men of the educated i classes mmber . of Therefore educated , women although we we cannot should perceive gladly see that the we immi are called gration u of on an to y

    assist such an immigration b , y any special means , or to bestow upon this p , or g upon eneral any bod other y of i class mmigrants of immi . " grants , any more favour than is shown to the

    Tlie saine sentiments , more or less coarsely worded , have been expressed by several newspapers published in the colony of Victoria ,

    and repeated by some English journals . As to the success of the operations hitherto carried on by the

    Middle-class Female Emigration Society , it may be enough to say that the emigrants who have as yet been sent out , have found

    employment within a week of their landing , with the exception of one governess , who waited six weeks for a situation . One reason

    for this is doubtless the fact that women , by courtesy called educatedto distinguish them from the labouring classcan and do

    become , domestic servants in the colonies , when , owing , to various causes it would be inconvenient and objectionable to do so in

    England . Other considerations apart , it is more worth their while to submit to the inevitable hardships and annoyances of such a

    position abroad , because the wages being higher , they have more money to lay by , and the prospect of independence is therefore less

    remote . It ought also to be mentioned that the number sent out has

    hitherto been very small . About a hundred women of that vague denomination , the middle-class , have in the course of a year been

    distributed among the different colonies of Victoria , New South "Wales , Queensland , Natal , India , Cape of Good Hope , and British

    Columbia . The essential feature in the Society ' s plan is , not to attempt to

    relieve the mother-country by throwing upon the colonies heterogeneous masses of women , but to guarantee on the one hand the

    fitness of emigrants for the positions they are intended to fill , and on the otherto afford to them some safeguardmuch needed on

    their first arrival , in a strange country , and some , assistance in finding situations . It is evident , therefore , that the sort of panic

    which seems to have arisen in Victoria , is entirely groundless . No one has proposed to send 150000 women to the colony of Victoria

    as a counterpoise to the 150 , , 000 superfluous men . While the market for female labour is as restricted in the colonies as it is in

    England , it is apparent that the demand for working women cannot _Tbe so great as that for working men . But the simple fact is , that

    tiH lately the very moderate demand for governesses and upperservants had not been satisfactorily met . The colonists have had

    _great difficulty in obtaining the services of the right sort of women , and the right sort of women have had great difficulty in finding their

    way to the colonies . To remove these difficulties has been the object

    of the Female Emigration Society , and that so far their work has ;

    82 Middle-Class Female Emigration

    82 MIDDLE-CLASS FEMALE EMIGRATION

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1862, page 82, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101862/page/10/