EMPIRE MIGRATION

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22444, 4 July 1938, Page 7

EMPIRE MIGRATION

TO THE EDITOR OP THE PRESS. Sir, —The Empire Settlement Board’s report to the British Government gives the question of Empire migration urgent importance just when public attention in New Zealand is concentrated on political issues: and this seems unfortunate. Britain’s empty spaces and the inability—not unwillingness, be it noted—of her surplus population to fill them, in face of an exceedingly dangerous European and Eastern situation, is evidently causing grave disquiet to the Home authorities. The whole problem, so far iis New Zealand is concerned, can be boiled down to one simple statement. We canhot expahd our primary industries. because Britain canhot for every reason—except that of her people not needing them—take more than she takes at present, and soon perhans will not be able to-take as much. We cannot expand our secondary industries because then Britain would take less primary products, and could buy only at a price that would spell ruin for every primary producer. The two facts, plus a defective monetary mechanism, set a definite limit to the expansion of our population; yet the larger problem, the one arisine out of th- European and Eastern situation, impels us to populate the country speed'!v or Perish if we don’t; In th’s connexion the whole sting of the British report lies in the tail: “Opportunities for the investment of United Kingdom capital in the Dominions must result”—note tlie imperative —-“ from the Dominion governments’ OoUov.” That means the whole rot* tea system of PU'ng debt on debt, if we eJeet to ponulate with our own race, is to. continue. At the Empire Migration Conference, to which I had the honour to be invited, at the Guildhall in Londoh last October, the same note was stHdent above all else. ''Opportunities for* overseas investment” were definitely the price Set for SimDivine the Dominion* with Britain’s surplus population. The conference was abortive.

That there is a surplus population in Britain one has only, to read the Beveridge report to realise. It is obviously

necessary under the present monetary system to maintain the conditions there described, for combined with cheap Dominion and foreign food —this incidentally threatening ruin to the Home agriculturist—they enable Britain to maintain world supremacy in her export and shipping trade. Also, these conditions produce the profits that provide the means fqr lending more money overseas to secure in interest payments cheap food again foxstill more exports—a sort of round-the-mulberry bush business, for which the known and deliberately maintained dis-equilibriums set up by this same obsolete money system are responsible. bringing profits to the few and ruin, poverty, and degradation to the many. Already three-quarters of Britain’s total foreign ovei’seas investments quoted on the London Stock Exchange are. according to Sir Gratton Doyle, in threatened, partial, or complete default; and even in this Dominion it might be seriously questioned how long can posterity go on paying interest on dead capital. Our money system is plainly a disease. The economists with various formulas prescribe varying remedies and this insistence on openings foxoverseas investments is one of them. The price is fixed by Britain for giving her people—the six or seven millions of the underdogs—that hope of a glimmer of radiance in life by emigration. What is New Zealand going to do about it?— Yours, etc., Y. T. SHAND. July 2. 1938.