THE REDISTRIBUTION OF PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 33, 8 August 1921, Page 6

THE REDISTRIBUTION OF PEOPLE

A vast proportion of mankind— and particularly that portion of mankind that consists oi: womankind—appears to be badly placed. In almost all English-speaking countries the • rural districts are under-manned, the'urban districts over-manned. The Mother Country as a whole is over-womaned, and the Continent of Europe i? so heavily over - womaned that the cablegrams are talking about.. fifteen. million old maids, while it is specifically stated that "35.per cent, of Germany's marriageable women will never find husbands." The solving of the German and the Continental problems is, of course, a German and Continental affair. The territories of the British Empire will find their organising .capacity sufficiently taxed in redistributing their own people, whose uneconomic urban tendency presents a problem of in creating difficulty

Production is Slot helped by an excessive congregation of men at focal points of transport—as, for instance, at the waterside, where an excess of labour gives rise to an organised effort to prolong the work instead of shortening it. In lean years the policy of proportion^ ing the' work in cities and ports to the number of workers—instead of proportioning the workers to the work—will' not survive : and, once an economic manning sffale is reestablished, the surplus men must be* put on the land, of else urban or suburban laboilr must be for them by an increase in local manufactures to an extent beyond all present calculations. ■ If New Zealand could distribute h§v men to more productive advantage, there would then be more economic opportunity here for some of Britain's surplus women. Meanwhile the British Government; is proposing to open the Civil Service more fully to women. At the same time, the secretary of the. Canterbury Public Service Association suggests that, m^the New Zealand Civil Service, women be given (next to superannuates) pride of place in the order of—retrenchment.