MORE POPULATION

Evening Post, Volume 65, Issue 65, 17 March 1924, Page 6

MORE POPULATION

An American visitor, Dr. 11. W. Franklin, has expressed the opinion in an interview that in New Zealand there is room for five to ten times the present population with an assurance of plenty for everyone. The water-power possibilities and the climatic conditions, he thinks, afford New Zealand the prospect of becoming a manufacturing nation. It is pleasant to hear such opinions from visitors who speak with intimate knowledge of other countries. Undoubtedly New Zealand is richly endowed, and it is not without reason that New Zealanders possess unbounded faith in the future. But "faith without works is dead." We have been in the past a little too prone to speak of New Zealand's capacity to carry a much greater population without assuring the means of absorbing that population. A greater population undoubtedly can be ab T sorbed with benefit to those who come and to those already in the country. But preparation for that greater population must be made. We cannot bring people here without experience and dump them down in waste places which they have not experience to develop. Nor can we employ them in manufacturing industries which are not yet developed. We do not suggest that Dr. Franklin advises any such course; but his remarks mas> be interpreted by the unthinking as supporting an immigration and manufacturing movement without plan or preparation. The plan must first be made and the ground prepared. In this work the Government must give the lead, but there is ample scope, as we have iinany times pointed, out, for cooperation by public and private organisations to second the Government effort.