The Daily Intelligencer

FOREIGN
COLONIZATION.

Some twenty-five years ago, in the city of New York, a handful of German clerks and porters got together one night and organized a company to be called the "German Porters' Association," the objects of which were merely self-protective and benevolent. That Society now numbers over seven thousand members, has a magnificent office in the city of its birth, and correspondents in Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and all the principal cities in the heart of the continent. Membership is fixed at twelve dollars per year, payable in monthly installments of one dollar each. This money was kept constantly at interest, and soon began to yield a large revenue as the society increased in numbers. At the end of two years each member was allowed a passage ticket (steerage, of course), in the Bremen line of steamers for any one of his friends that he might select. The society grew so rapidly that it soon established a school of its own in Germany: where boys were taught French and English, so that when they arrived in the United States they could speak three languages, and keep the American and English systems of accounts as well as those of their own country. Of the young merchants of New York, in foreign trade, not a few owe their presence in the United States to the "German Porters' Association."

No man who has noticed the Puget Sound country can have failed to observe the fact that while the soil is of unsurpassed fertility, there are yet no great bodies of agricultural lands in sight. The American wants "all out doors," and don't feel like fencing unless he has at least one hundred and sixty acres as a starter. Your cautious, prudent German, on the other hand, has never seen a farm bigger than ten acres, and would regard a quarter-section as a principality. He would aim to get rich, not so much by cultivating a broad expanse of land as by letting nothing go to waste. Meagre as might be the first year's profit on his labor he would still keep pegging away in the hope of a more ample reward for the future. No mining excitement would lure him from his little home after he once got the title-deeds in his hand: and his labor and the profit thereon, would at once become a part of the country, and a unit in the sum total of its solid wealth.

Therefore, we ask why a Colonization Society, to import mechanics, artisans and dairymen from Germany to this Territory cannot be organized upon the same basis as the "German Porters' Association" of New York? The Pacific Mail Company will sell steerage tickets from Bremen and Hamburg, via Panama and San Francisco, to Seattle for $92, and this would enable many a good workman to get here instead of toiling all his life for a pittance at home. Fix the monthly dues for subscription at two dollars, with twenty charter members; that would give $480 at the end of the first year, besides what interest had accumulated on it during the year. Let four tickets be drawn by allotment at the end of the first year for members to remit to their friends, and on the next annual drawing, those four could not contest in the drawing. The Society would soon increase so that the money sent back to bring out immigrants would go up into the thousands. This would bring us out a desirable element of population, and the little ten-acre patches along our creek bottoms would soon be converted into pleasant homes.

The Aurora Colony was a blessing to Oregon, and the name of William Keil will be held in reverence as long as the Willamette flows onward to the sea.

With a little concerted action on the part of our German citizens, we could soon have a steady stream of that most desirable element of population pouring in here from the Fatherland. Who will head the movement?