THE DOMINION'S POPULATION

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 43, 19 February 1909, Page 4

THE DOMINION'S POPULATION

[An interesting return of the population of the Dominion has been issued •by the Registrar-General. It was announced some weeks ago that we had at last passed the million mark, and this return shows in detail the factors that have contributed to this achievement. To begin with, the white population at the end of December last was only 960,642. and to bring the figures Up to seven haa to be added the 47,731 Maoris given in the 1906 census, making a total of 1,008,373. The ia-bla under notice affords a comparison oyer a period of five years. We find that the increase of the European population in 1908 was 31,158, a total to which excess of births over deaths contributed 16,897, and excess of arrivals over departures 14,261. The~increase was 3.36 per cent of the total population, compared with 2.28 in 1907. Taking a period of five years there was noticeable a steady increase in the number of births over deaths, with the exception of 1907, when there was an appreciable decline as the result of quite an unusually heavy mortality that year —the death rate was 10.95 per 1000 persons living against 9.57 in 1908-

The most instructive comparisons are to be found in an examination of the additions to our population from overseas. In the year 1904 the net increase from abroad, after deducting the number of persons who left New Zealand, was 10,35*3, and jn 19Q5, 9,302. In 1906 the excess of arrivals over departures rose to 12,843 (the Exhibition contributed to this result). In 1907 the net gain from outside the Dominion was the smallest for five years (5,730), mainly on account •of a more equal interchange of people with Australia and departure of persons who had visited the Exhibition. The largest gain from over seas during the quinquennium was in 1908—14,201 persons. New Zealand gained in the period 1904-8, according to returns, 52,496 persons from abroad. Of the gain in population from abroad in 1908 reference to Australian tables 6b/>ws us that less than 3,000 were drawn from the Commonwealth, and, though Mr. Yon Dadelszen in his return is silent on the subject of sources of the increase, we may reasonably assume that over 9000 were from the United Kingdom. An increase in twelve months by immigration of about 1.55 per cent is a very considerable addition indeed, and compares more than favourably with similar percentages for the United States, the great lodestar of the emigrant from the overcrowded countries of Europe. Further, the absorption of more than 10,000 persons a year from beyond the seas is evidence of the ability of th« country to assimilate a steady stream of immigration and profitably employ it, for the last five years cover a period of expanding trade and steady prosperity. Immigration must continue if the growth of the Dominion is not to he checked; that it must he confined to the producer class, and not he who lives on the producer, we have made sufficiently plain In recent articles.

The figures that the Registrar-General presents to our attention must on the whole he regarded as. satisfactory; New Zealand has doubled her population in less than a quarter of a century. Will another million of population, provided' no national calamity supervenes, engage the attention of the Registrar-General before 1*335?