But serious as the question is at the present moment, it is but light in its intensity compared with what it must be in the near future, unless we change our methods.

One fact ought to be definitely understood and seriously pondered, and it is this: no emigration agency, no board of guardians, no church organisation and no human salvage organisation emigrates or assists to emigrate young people of either sex who cannot pass a severe medical examination and be declared mentally and physically sound.

This demands serious thought; for the puny, the weak and the unfit are ineligible; our colonies will have none of them, and perhaps our colonies are wise, so the unfit remain at home to be our despair and affliction.
But our colonies demand not only physical and mental health, but moral health also, for boys and girls from reformatory and industrial schools are not acceptable; though the training given in these institutions ought to make the young people valuable assets in a new country.
The serious fact that only the best are exported and that all the afflicted and the weak remain at home is, I say, worthy of profound attention.
Thousands of healthy working men with a little money and abundant grit emigrate of their own choice and endeavour.

Fine fellows they generally are, and good fortune attends them! Thousands of others with no money but plenty of strength are assisted "out," and they are equally good, while thousands of healthy young women are assisted "out" also.

All through the piece the strong and healthy leave our shores, and the weaklings are left at home.
It is always with mixed feelings that I read of boys and girls being sent to Canada, for while I feel hopeful regarding their future, I know that the matter does not end with them; for I appreciate some of the evils that result to the old country from the method of selection.
Emigration, then, as at present conducted, is no cure for the evil it is supposed to remedy.