TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 241, 12 October 1933, Page 6

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

A CANAL SCHEME.

(By PEO BONO PUBLICO.)

Mention is made in one of my English papers of a great scheme to absorb all the unemployed labour of the Mother Country by the construction of two or three full-sized ship canals from the Atlantic or the Irish Sea to the North Sea. The cost; is put down tentatively at five hundred million pounds. I don't know where the State would get its return from, but if in one way or another—in profit or relief—the benefit could be estimated at twenty millions a year, the scheme might be worth consideration. But I don't suppose it will be seriously considered, at any rate for years to come. However, it contains the germ of an idea that might be valuable to the' Mother Country. Apparently it lias boon suggested now only as a desirable scheme of capital expenditure to give occupation to the people of Great Britain. That is an aspect with which I am not concerned just now. Its special attraction, in my eyes, involves rather a long story, of which it is possible only to indicate the principal points. And, strangely enough, it concerns London chiefly. The. commercial importance of Great Britain depends primarily on its position. l/ook at the map of Europe, and you will sec that all tlio trade between Central and Northern Europe and the Americas has to pass Great Britain. If it is to avoid the stormy northern waters it has to pass down the English Channel. It was this fact that first gave London its immense importance in international trade and so enormously inerrased the wealth and standing that it already enjoyed as the principal distributing centre of Great Britain. Modern trade could quite well «:<> pist London, but for other reasons tluit I ■cannot discuss here the capital lias continued to expand, and it is now immensely overgrow/). At tho same time all the newer industries are developing in the southern districts, and the shift of population to the south has become probably the most serious social problem. Briefly, then, there is urgent need of some development that will reverse this population drift, and long ago it was remarked that if a strait could be out through the island, say. firom the Forth to the Clyde, the concentration of people in the south would be definitely cheeked. The probability is that the Atlantic liners from German ports, at any rule, would use this route in preference to the Channel route. Glasgow's trade has boon predominantly an export tnide, but it is argued, with pome reason, that the construction of this canal would tend to make it the distributing centre for the north. The scheme mentioned involves also canals from the Sol way to the Tvne. and from the Mersey to the Humbcr. Those, however, do not appear on tho face of them to be feasible propositions.