The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1935. MIGRATION DIFFICULTIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 208, 3 September 1935, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1935. MIGRATION DIFFICULTIES.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good tlmt we can do.

It is a curious coincidence that in the same day's news should appear Lord Bledisloc's letter to ''The Times" advocating; more .settlement in New Zealand and Mr. Coates'

deprecation of "continual attempts at expansion of production when there was only a limited market for profitable consumption." As conditions arc at present, Mr. Coates' comment on the reported desire of the Danish Government to co-operate with Australia and New Zealand is a dash of cold water upon Lord Bledisloe's hopes, for the problem facing this country is not production, but sales. That the country could produce far more than it does is obvious. Even from the land already under cultivation the output could be greatly increased, without bringing in any more land, and that yield is being affected by better forming. What Lord Bledisloe. says is perfectly /-orrect; we could carry several times our small population of a million and a half. In. the present state of the world, however, what are we going to do with our surplus produce? Wakefield's ideas are cited, but Wakeffeld operated at the beginning of an age of great expansion, when Britain was becoming the workshop of the world, and it was the Dominions' destiny to supply her with food and raw material in return for manufactured goods. Now the British market is flooded, and the English farmer demands protection. The British Inter-Department Committee that reported on migration last year said that migration was a product, not a cause of recovery, and therefore the best method of promoting it was to improve trade. It was useless to settle more people on the land in the Dominions if they had not an expanding market for their products. That is the position at present, but it would be a sorry outlook if there were no change to be expected of the' future —if we had to contemplate an indefinitely long period in which no organised attempt could be made to fill up from outside the empty spaces of the Dominions. This would mean that the British Commonwealth was unable, either for lack of capacity or as a result of general world conditions, to develop its magnificent estate, and surely it is too early to admit anything of the kind.