LESSONS OF THE CENSUS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1144, 3 June 1911, Page 4

LESSONS OF THE CENSUS.

Although it is impossible to see quickly all the bearings of the population statistics printed yesterday, there are yet some broad facts that reveal themselves at the first touch of analysis. One of these is contained in the table that we appended yesterday to the mass of figures that were telegraphed from Christchurch. It is, that the population on this side of Cook Strait continues without a check to become a larger and larger proportion of the total population. In 1874 there were more than three persons in the South Island to every two persons in the North Island ; in other words the population of the North Island was only between 37 and 38 per cent of the whole population of the colony. Year by year, however, the growth in the North Island being always faster than the growth of the Southern total, the gap has been closed up. By 1900 the Northern population had equalised the Southern population, but the movement that produced this result did not cease. On April 2 of this year there were nearly four persons on the northern side of the Strait for every three south of it. During the last 20 years the population of the Northern half of the country has increased by over 280,000, while the increase in the South has been less than 100,000. Properly to ascertain the causes for this really very striking fact, one must range far and wide in one's investigations. Attention is due to another point of equally grave significance. During the five years 1901 to 1906 the population increased by 14.99, practically 15 per cent. During the past five years the increase has been. 13.41, less than 13'- per cent. This check in the rate of growth of population is a serious affair when wo take into account the liabilities that the country has incurred on the Government's plea that development must be stimulated. The public debt has increased by over £20,000,000, or rather more than 30 per cent, while the population has been increasing by only Wj per cent, It is quite ohwious that the increase in thaj?opu>

Intion is little moro than the natural increase, and that the net immigration has been insignificant where, if we may regard Canada's achievements as the results that should be looked for in a young and sparsely-populated country, it ought to have been the main contributing factor of the nation's growth. Ready as they have shown themselves to repudiate the validity in New Zealand of truths that philosophers and statesmen regard as valid and vital everywhere else, our Ministers have never dared to question the enormous national and-Imperial importance of encouraging immigration. At the Imperial Conference the other day Sir Joseph Ward admitted the importance of inter-Imperial migration, but the trouble is that he has done practically nothing to attract population, while, doing a very great deal to_ discourage it. Despite the enormous borrowing— which in this respect can be an efficient, although it must be a deleterious, substitute for good general policy—the population is growing, for a young new country with great opportunities, at a slow rate. We should, if even one per cent of the Government's rhetorical extravagances were fact, have a very high coefficient of population absorption. Yet the immigrants come in the thinnest sort of stream. If the population grew at the same rate as the public debt, much of our criticism of the frantic borrowings of the Government would lose its force. Instead of going towards true nationbuilding, our borrowings go towards keeping the nation, as it were, on the spree. The purpose of the census is not to produce figures for the delight of statisticians in other countries or for the satisfaction of an idle local curiosity. The object is, or ought to bo, to obtain statistics for the guidance of future policy. That seems an obvious thing to say, but on the points we have noted the lessons of this census were taught by the census of 1906, and were unheeded by the Government, so that there is no.impertinence in suggesting to Me. Buddo that he might stir up his colleagues to profit by the figures.