A MISSED POINT

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 88, 12 January 1928, Page 5

A MISSED POINT

IN BRITAIN’S UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM

EMIGRATION HAS DECLINED

In a speech on emigration and unemployment, reported in the "Glasgow Herald,” Sir Robert Horne made the interesting point that there are as many people at work as before the war, but that the unemployment figures are heavy, because emigration lias declined. ' Before giving facts and figures he referred to a conversation he had with "a Canadian Minister, who had pointed out that,' while Continental people offered to come to Canada if they would only be- admitted, the British people, for the most part, would only come to Canada if they were helped. “It was a fact,” continued Sir Robert Horne, “that he did not think any-' one could look upon with equanimity that the immigration into Canada last year included 49,000 people from Brit-' ain and 87,000 people froiu foreign nations. These figures gave food for very serious thought. “We had tucked up in one corner a vast population, and overseas enormous territories of great potential wealth and resources untenanted and unfilled. At Home we had 482 persons to the square mile, and in Canada and Australia we had only two. In Canada, a country fortv-twd times as large as England, Scotland, and Wales, there was a population of only 9,000,000 people, scarcely anv bigger than the population of London; and in Australia, which was thirty-three times as large as Britain, there were only 5,500,000. “In our 'possessions we were wealthier than the United States of America if we used them properly. “If someone could wave a fairy wand and redistribute all this population, how much better off we should be today, how greatly our problems would be solved. But there was no fairy wand operating in the world; it was only by human energy and activity and endeavour that anything worth while could ever be achieved. It was for us as a nation to apply our minds to the problem and see what was the best solution we could devise. “There was a startling feature in the position. Before the war, in 1913 the rate of emigration from this country was 223,000; in 1925 the figure had declined to 84,000, In 1926 it had risen to 115,000, of which 93,000 went to Imperial settlements, but that figure was still 100,000 less than the number which emigrated in the year 1913. “The problem of unemplovment in this country was, he thpught, very little understood to-day. Although we had 1,200,000 people unemployed, we had now in employment approximately as many people as were employed before the war.

“The vast army of unemployed which caused us our greatest distress was due in the main to a surplus which had remained with us because our people had not been emigrating at the pre-war rate. “If emigration had proceeded at the same rate as before the war we would not have this great difficulty. Since the war every Government incitement had been offered to people to try their fortunes overseas. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1922 he set aside a sum of £3,000,000 a year from the revenue for the purpose of giving help to schemes of emigration, involving training, settlement, and cost of transport. “The fate of that fund was remarkable. There was to be available in the first vear £1,500,000, and after that £3,000,000 a vear for fifteen years. But down to 1926 out of £10,500,000 available through this arrangement only £1,500,000 had been called upon.”