WASTE MATERIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 116, 12 November 1935, Page 9

WASTE MATERIAL

■ —r*^ MIGRATION PROBLEM CHIEF SCOUT'S VIEWS I: i THE EMPIRE CONTROVERSY. (From "The Post's" Representative.) , LONDON, October 12, Mr. J. H. Thomas, Secretary of State for'the Dominions, has promised to receive on October 24 a deputation from the Voluntary Empire Migration Conference which was held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne last month. • In the meantime, the correspondence in "The Times"'inspired by the conference continues. In three long letters in the past few days nothing very new is added to the controversy. Lord Baden-Powell takes up-' the orthodox attitude and suggests a process of infiltration of boys between 15 and 18. He points out that the Scout movement, with its branches everywhere, is in m position to, find places for boys, and to father them in their new environment. "From the colonial point of view," the Chief Scout adds, "the reopening of migration would seem eminently desirable, and from the home point of view even more so. It would at once ease the present deplorable situation in the United Kingdom, where thousands of capable young fellows are stranded without work and without prospects, and are drifting, through no fault of their own, to become waste human material, at once a disgrace and a possible danger to our community. "It should not be difficult to revive the nomination. system whereby boys could go out to different parts of the Empire as and where required; to be posted/ under some form of apprenticeship, to farm or factory; with due provision for their fathering and aftercare." '■''.■ A SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY. In answer to representatives of the Dominions who have said that the time is not opportune for migration, Councillor R. S. Dalgliesh, Lord Mayor of Newcastle, who convened the Newcastle conference, takes the view that it is no good waiting until prosperity returns to the Dominions. In his opinion, he says, "the distribution of organised migration is one of the first steps towards recovery of Empire prosperity. To postpone migration till prosperity in the Dominions has actually been achieved is a contradiction in terms, for the Dominions will never be really prosperous until they have considerably increased their present populations. It is a short-sighted policy to insist that migration should v»rait till markets for the products of migrants have been actually built up. Rather let us build up the consuming power of our masses by increasing employment both in the United Kingdom and oversea—which migration, with financed and supervised settlement oversea, will assuredly do. The potential markets already exist—the masses of the people at home and oversea have all too many unsatisfied needs. "What is necessary is an Empire Migration Conference, to be -convened by the Government at the earliest possible date, to discuss migration and other allied problems, such as employment and markets." A BIRTH-RATE PROBLEM. Mr. L. H. Pike (Acting AgentGeneral for Queensland) suggests that the failure to settle more adequately and expeditiously the sparsely ' populated parts of Australia is, to a large extent, due to economic and industrial causes; these same causes are also mainly responsible for the creation in the United Kingdom, of that same "waste human material." Should the present decline in the birth-rate of the Empire continue, he says, there is no doubt that a population stalemate will be reached in this and many other countries in the not far-distant future. "The problem envisaged, therefore, is a far greater one than that of Empire migration," Mr. Pike continues. "It is one affecting the future prosperity and welfare of the British Commonwealth of Nations as a whole. The simple policy advocated of transferring large numbers of people from Great Britain to other parts of the Empire, while not helping to solve our present economic problem in Australia, would, I suggest, at the same time tend to bring nearer that period of stalemate which at present confronts this country.

"In lAustralia, as in this country, we are faced with the problem of how to avoid the danger of creating that 'waste'human material' of which Lord Baden-Powell speaks, and the higher birth-rale in Queensland and other parts of the Dominion is a factor which, at the present time, does not make our problem easier of solution."