POPULATION OF DOMINION

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21243, 15 August 1934, Page 10

POPULATION OF DOMINION

ECONOMIC BARRIERS TO INCREASE . That economic readjustment was an essential preliminary to any attempt to increase the population of New Zealand by immigration was maintained yesterday by Mr G, Lawn, lecturer in economics at Canterbury College, when commenting on the remarks of the Gover-nor-General (Lord Bledisloe) advocating more population for the Dominion. Mr Lawn considered that New Zealand could certainly maintain a much larger population than its present 1,500,000, but only if the distribution of the goods it produced were so managed as to do away with, the present conditions in which people went short in the midst of plenty. There was no doubt that New Zealand could maintain a much larger population, said Mr Lawn, but an essential preliminary was that the country should adjust its economic affairs. Certain obvious things had to be done in providing better distribution of what the country produced. For New Zealand a main issue was the rational use of its own resources. Its problems were not so much of production, as of distributing the goods which were so readily produced, and maintaining high minimum standards. Once this problem of distribution was solved there was no question of the ability of the country to absorb more population—not only the natural increase, but immigrants as well. Because the country had so high a per capita production the solution of the problem should be comparatively simple. But so long as the Dominion continued to maintain a system in which people living in the midst of plenty lacked food and clothing and firing, it would be foolish to try to absorb more people.