HEN, WOMEN And CAPITAL FOR NEW ZEALAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

HEN, WOMEN And CAPITAL FOR NEW ZEALAND

SO much hu been written pressing the point of urgency for New Zealand to undertake a scheme of practical immigration that one need hardly labour this further than to say, if only from the point of view of defence— the danger from without—or, to obtain a more balanced economy —the danger from within—and the world situation at large bearing hard on both these points, the problem is one crying for solution. The difficulty is to And * scheme by which ws could Mcurs surplus population with advantage both to Britain a"d New Zealand and provide sufflcier* attraction to the emigrant himself to induce him to exchange the certainties of the known for ths uncertainties of the unknown. A worth-whits object ire would be to add st least a total of 9,600,000 people to rfew Zealsnd within 10 years, of which about 2,500,000 would be British and perhaps one million ptelted from the best of thoss offering se frssly from the northern parts of Europe. WU SktM EmipdttT To establish a starting point let us define "surplus" population in Britain n R those earning an average income below that mtnlmum laid down by the Board of Health as necessary to obtain a sufficiency in food, clothes and shelter to maintain a family in physical health. Tliis would giv« an immediate range of about eight million people available, and possibly considerably more ( when the armament industries begin to'show signs of slowing up. It is in this stratum where much of the British taxpayer's money for social services soaks away— the budget for it this year is 235 millions. It the co-operation of the British Government could be obtained the suggestion in this short outline of a possible scheme to secure migrants would be to estimate the British taxpayer's liability to the individual family applying for migration—that is his present and prospective loss for social servicing— capitalize it and exchange New Zealand bonds held in London for an issue of British bonds to that amount in value. These New Zealand bonds would then be repatriated with the emigrants to New Zealand and after expenses were deducted —transportation and other costs —these bond*' or their equivalent in oanital would be vested in each individual emigrant and become hia or her absolute property. ficrtnin safeguards would be required and details would have to be worked out, but beyond saying that for the flrnt hundred thousand it would be necessary to atipulate some practical knowledge of house building, it is unnecessary to entei into that here. To take a practical example, a tru< ease of a working man that can b< actually vouched for in the North ol England. After meeting his to health and unemployment tnsurana

'' Exchange Of Debt'' Immigration Scheme funds, he—a railway servant —has a wage of £2 2/ per week to support a wife 'and lira children. By throwing up his job and applying for State maintenance (he haa been nfiofficially advised to d% thia by varioua departments), he I receives £2 7/0 a week; that is, P/6 mqre than for working—also one new ■uit of clothe* per . annum, bedding, boots, clothing and free milk for his children, and for a payment of 2/ per week per child the Education authority will provide them with more nourishing food than he himself can provide. In all he may draw the equivalent of about £4 per week. This particular family happens to he healthy, J>ut add pulmonary weakness to the wife, and say a partial cripple from infantile paralysis to one of the children, and the taxpayer*' liability would not then be less than about £4 10/ per week, or £234 per annum. Halve this to allow for any offsetting advantages that may accrue to the taxpayer, and one can hardly say that if New Zealand took over this family as it stands, capitalised at £2000 in New Zealand 4 per cent debt held in London, equal to £2500 in New Zealand. less all transport charges, that the British taxpayer would be anything else than a gainer over the transaction from a strict profit and loss point of view. The attraction of a free and comfortable passage to New Zealand for the whole iamily, with sufficient oapital of their own to ensure such affluence and such a degree of security from want that would never before have been dreamed of by them, should procure sufficient applicants to enable a certain amount of selection. However, it mpst not be overlooked, while character would be the main determining factor, that broadly speaking the less desirable the person* as emigrants the larger the sum to be fixed in nwM«ment for freeing the Britieli taxpayer from liability. Tf an average claas of emigrant applied of «o high a standard that the British taxpayer would only jrrant an " average of £H2 (sterling) capital per . head to discharge his social service liability it would still, on 2,500,000 people. j be sufficient to repatriate the whole of the New Zealand debt held in Britain. Complete family units would be preferred, but this would not exclude single f people, male or female, though naturally r for [>ersons young, healthy and skilled at any trade or work, only a small qualification for capital would be needed. It ie is not anticipated, however, that till the •e flrnt half-million at least had been trans>f planted the scheme would have any « attraction at all to migrants except from se the capital acquisition ppint of view.

ByY. T. Shand

Much time must elapse before the parente of the transplanted families became thoroughly assimilated into Dominion conditions, but that period would entail virtually no lose to New Zealand, for it would be their own capital that would be used up in the process. The anchor sheet—the children —would remain to ensure final assimilation, and the truest accession of wealthto New Zealand in a healthy and virile people added to its population. Much care in planning with sympathy and understanding to secure suitable environment and conditions making for success in this great trek would require a major effort not only from the Government but from all New Zealand as well. Debtor ami Creditor By the Statute of Westminster New Zealand is technically mistress of her own destiny. Actually the key is held in London, and the real position is as natural between debtor and creditor, no more and no less. Lately Britain has expressed herself as being more than willing to use this key generously to open the door for these millions of semisubtnerged decent British men and women to enter a land of new hope, opportunity and abundance of food. New Zealand has only to propose a feasible and reasonably fair plan.

There is no need to wave rhetorical flags about outposts of Empire and filling up the great wide open spaces. We must really get down to it. Too well one realises that much of the "wide open spaces" to be filled will of a surety be mainly behind the grocery counter or factory bench. The great point is that by some such scheme the shops and factories may be built and owned by those people for whose use thev are; they would bring the wherewithal to do it with them; they would bring their own jobs right to the very source of their food supply, which is here waiting with the cheapest and most abundant "white coal" supplies in the whole world.

New Zealand has played her part. With courage, vision and faith in the future tens of million* of pounds have been spent in developmental work— roads, public building!, railways and a huge hydro-electric power undertaking i sufficient t* sarve five million people,

a more economic distribution of its population. (b) Avoidance of that element of vitiation in its counsels where the debtor-creditor psychology corrodes and subverts the highest aims for the general good, even when all the goodwill in the world is forthcoming on both sides (three conferences on migration have already been abortive —or nearly so). (c) A levelling up of the population in Britain by taking from the "surplus" end instead of as formerly levelling down, (d) Increased employment for her factories by virtue of New Zealand having eleven millions a year added to its buying power, (e) Increased prosperity for the British agriculturist through better prices for his products, that formerly were forced to compete in the Home market with Dominion products sold at any old price for debt servicing. Some of this surplus would, of course, be consumed in New Zealand by the increased population there. Lord Home's Plan This suggestion to restart the flow of emigration from Britain by means of migrants with a certain amount of capital is not entirely new. Lord Home, at the Empire Migration Conference held last October in London, suggested that the contributions paid by migrants under national insurance in Britain should be transferred with them, and this was about the only gleam of practical common sense in a three days' conference almost totally negative as to results. Recently Mr. Winston Churchill brought his powerful and incisive mind to bear on the subject. After pointing out that emigrants would be anything but welcome if the Dominions had to borrow from London to house them, he said, "It has been estimated that the sums paid to a family during unemployment are equivalent to £2000 invested in gilt-edged securities," and went on to say that it was not surprising that men and women hesitated to surrender their right to this £2000 and to health insurance to widows, orphans' and old age pensions, in addition, for nothing more than a "free trip to a Dominion or colony. Even with a homestead with a load of debt on it, such a man might still be doubtful.'' This epitomises what this article is trying to make clear. There must be some way of transferring this cover. There must, in other words, he some way of sending one, two or three thousand pounds' worth of capital goods with every emigrant family t* their new country free of debt.

almost complete and ready for nse. She now stands like the rich man in the parable who prepared a feast and sent out invitations to all his friends. Various excuses were made for not coming, and it seemed as if the feast would fall flat, so he sent into and collected all from the highways and byways—not, quite so "select," perhaps, but it is safe to say detracting little from the success of the gathering. Might not these people be sent for and be invited from the highways and byways? Not perhaps the finest in Britain but simply the best procurable within the confines of a practical and not merely visionary scheme.

Australia founded her nationhood With less and what a race of virile men and fine women they are! However, it would be all to the general good to intermix a proportion of the educated professional and skilled artisan type of various callings—doctors, engineers, builders and so on —from Europe, whose training and skill would stand them in lieu of capital. It is principally among this class —the more intellectual proportion of the populations in North Europe to-day that there is the greatest anxiety to emigrate, on account of racial, religious and political persecution, so little difficulty need be anticipated further than language and arranging transport. Advantages Surveyed As a general recession in trade is now setting in from the recent high levels in Britain it is reasonable to suppose that with this proposed forward move in New Zealand a considerable number of people of the taxpayer entrepreneur class, with capital, would also emigrate to New Zealand. These people, of course, could-have no part in the exchanging of debt scheme, but would come attracted by the prospects and prosperity that would undoubtedly prevail in the general outlook for enterprise and capital in providing amenities for so great a number of arrivals and -those due to arrive.

Some may object that after all this would not reduce the Njw Zealand national debt, but there is i* vast difference on the effect within a country between debt that is held -inside and that loaned from without; the former represents an annual transfer of wealth from one group of citizens to another. Indeed, it may be be a transfer of wealth in the same group, because it is largely their own taxes to the State as income taxpayers that pay them the interest the State owes them. In brief, internal debt payment is a transfer of wealth inside a country and it is not lost to the nation. External debt payment is a transfer of wealth outside the country. It is an absolute loss to the whole nation and crippling taxation has to be exacted to obtain it.

The advantages to New Zealand of such a scheme seem obvious enough, but what of Britain?

In this way man-power and free capital would go hand in hand and prosperity once started would be hard to stop. Past conferences held in Britain have urged that emigration should go hand in hand with overseas loans for establishing the transplanted population. k Is there not evidence enough in the British Empire and out of it today of the stultifying effect on both I debtor and creditor of these loans when they reveal themselves later spent apd ■used through the dead hand of unrepayaljle debt? Surely it is not the multiplication of new debts but the extinction of old ones that is required.

There is: (a) The general increase of prosperity of the Empire by obtaining

There is the crime of an empty land —one of the moat eminently desirable in the whole -world—flaunted in the face of the overcrowded millions in other lands before us, a menace to ourselves and the whole Empire. Every day the inevitable challenge to use it or yield it creeps closer. Britain cannot hold the gates open for aver.