The Automobile Factory's Crisis

Sure enough, once the fervor the infrastructure plan had stirred throughout the world gradually faded, the number of immigrants in the second week took a sharp nosedive, dropping to fewer than 60,000.

Although this was still good news—after all, 60,000 people a week meant at least 240,000 a month, and the annual number of immigrants would even exceed 2.5 million.

The problem was that this immigration figure was bound to fall further. If the Australasian Government took no action, then the number of immigrants attracted during this economic crisis would be about all they could expect.

Population had always been Australasia's greatest weakness. Arthur had always understood this principle, so he could not possibly miss a good opportunity to increase the population.

The rapid decline in immigration did not mean that Australasia's appeal to immigrants had diminished.

In fact, if they had a choice, most of the unemployed in the United States and Europe would still be willing to come to Australasia.

The problem was that these people were all unemployed, and even their basic food and clothing were issues. Naturally, they could not produce the hefty fares needed to travel to Australasia.

In other words, to keep immigration numbers high, they had to properly solve the problem of passage for the unemployed in the United States and Europe who wanted to come to Australasia.

How could they solve this problem? There were actually two possible solutions.

The first was for the diplomatic embassies to register immigrants directly and advance passage money to those who had registered, giving them the funds to purchase tickets and travel to Australasia.

The problem was that this method could not prevent people from pretending to be immigrants simply to swindle the advances for passage and use the money to buy food for themselves and