The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATE The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1922. SURPLUS POPULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 83, 10 April 1922, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATE The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1922. SURPLUS POPULATION.

For the cause that Jacks assiatanee. For ihe wrong that need* resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

; The great volume of talk about ■■ Imperial migration may be bringing the Empire nearer the achievement of something practical on a large scale. At any rate the Comonwealth proposes to ; borrow fifty millions for immigration purposes, and the British Government is apparently willing to assist Australia by' providing one-third of the interest on this money. Moreover, a Bill to provide for financial co-operation between Britain and the Dominions in respect to emigration and immigration has been introduced in the House of Commons. : The idea of Britain paying part interest! on an immigration loan is not hew; it was proposed in London in 1921 by Senator Milieu, who put forward a scheme for establishing 20,000 Britisb j settlers on certain selected areas, Britain to pay half the interest on the loan. The British Government then I preferred the method of making loans to individual settlers. We are, however, I less concerned with the details of these co-operative schemes than with the principle which the British Government is i accepting so definitely, that Britain has a larger population than she cau find j employment for, and that it is the duty J of the State to move this surplus to the oversea parts of the Empire. ■ Lord Mtlner has described the migration policy that should be aimed at as "an enduring policy of oversea settlement which should tend to bring about the best distribution of the man-power of 'the Empire, and so to develop and strengthen tho whole Empire." He rightly holds that every effort should •be made to keep British migrants within the Empire. Such migration will strengthen communities that are British in institutions and spirit, and extend. British trade, for the more settlement is developed in the Dominions the' greater will be the demand for British goods. One may agree with all this without being blind lo two serious con- ] siderations on the other side. One is that emigration inevitably takes the cream of the classes from which it flows. The men and women who emigrate are for the most part healthy, resourceful | and enterprising. Consequently, as we have frequently pointed out, the Englishman has a right to ask whether emigration on a large scale is entirely fair to his country. Moreover, as Mr. Harold Cox points out in an article summarised in our cable news to-day, the Dominions especially want emigrants of the class with which Britain is least willing to part. The Dominions want men who have had some experience on the land and will take up land in their 1 j new homes. Land setlement is the| foundation of Imperial migration. "It! was clear from the outset," says thei report of last year's Conference on State-, aided Empire Settlement, "that in all the | Dominions represented the openings available for workers of other classes depended upon the increase in the number of primary, producers." But Btitain needs her farmers and agricultural labourers. Her towns may be unhealthily

large, and her industrial population too great for its opportunities, but it is notorious that rural Britain could support a much greater number of people. In 1851 agricultural labourers numbered nearly a million and a-half; at the census of 1911 the total was only threequarters of a million, and it is expected that the census of last year will show a further reduction. The lure of the cities and oversea countries became so strong in 1911 that there were barely enough men in the country districts for the work required. The war showed what a perilous position Britain had put herself in by becoming so dependent upon foreign food. Does anybody think that England will be any healthier and safer if the drift to the towns goes on, and the Dominions arc fed at the expense of the English countryside?

The Dominions need population, but they should understand that they may get this population at a grievous cost to the Mother Country. Moreover, if Britain takes steps to keep a large percentage of her farmers and agricultural labourers at home, the Dominions will be ofTcred numbers of townsmen as immigrants. In any case, indeed, if plans are made for sending out scores of thousands of British emigrants, a con- j sidcrable number of these men and women will be town bred. How arc these people going to be turned into pioneer?, to break in. say, the backblocks of Victoria, or the wilds of Western Australia? It is easy to talk laTgcly and vaguely of filling up the vacant spaces oversea —and tlay arc vacant enough, many of them —Witt the problem will not be solved merely by dumping down in a wilderness inexperienced strangers from Manchester, Bolton or Birmingham. To do so would he to court financial failure and human tragedy. No. any great scheme of oversea settlement, unless it is to be carried out with men who all come from Britain's country districts, must make provision for training and for tiding immigrants over the period during which they are finding their feet.