MIGRATION AND A NEW PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 8

MIGRATION AND A NEW PLAN

(To the fcaitor.)

Sir,—l beg to express appreciation of the article on population by your special correspondent, Arthur Fraser, and, at the same time, offer one point of constructive criticism. Hegarding ways and means of effective immigration (which is obviously essential for New Zealand) I was struck by Mr. Fraser's statement: ". . . Why the

various unions of this country should not obtain the necessary number (of artesians, etc.) by a co-operative scheme with their like unions in England or through the International Labour Office in Geneva? The men could be brought out here by the unions themselves and placed in immediate employment." As a means of solving the problem before us this recommendation, to my mind, is "so far and yet so near." "So far," because it is inconceivable that the unions, constituted as they are at present, would be willing to take such a step. For they have eyes to see that the success of the plan would ultimately depend upon the co-operation of the employers, whose interests, under the present system, continually (and inevitably) conflict with those of their employees. Furthermore, the unionists know that there is a grim reality behind that phrase "the labour market" —and that there, as in all markets today, the unfortunate law of supply and demand operates. Under present conditions, therefore, I can envisage the unions following Mr. Fraser's suggestion only by an act of heroic virtue and self-sacrifice —which spirit, alas, is far, far away from ,our country today.

But, now, if our "unions" existed in another and more natural form; if the employers and employees in each industry, each trade, and every business, collaborated as do the workers and directorate of a great gas concern in England; if the representatives of Capital and Labour, first within the single cell of the private business then within the organ of the trade or industry, would combine to form selfgoverning unions, in which the interests of both parties would be mutually related; if they were united thus so that neither one could prosper without his co-partner prospering too. nor both prosper without benefiting the consumer, advancing their trade or industry, and hence enriching their country;

if only our major industries controlled | themselves in this efficient and autonomous manner, how simple if would be for their respective unions to organise the importation of artisan labour for the advancement of New Zealand's trade, industry, and society. It is also the opinion of the writer that the formation of such "unions" is .the only conceivable means of obviating the bureaucracy that. threatens our country: for if workers and employers of labour show their ability and willingness to collaborate for the self-control of their own mutual industrial affairs, there would be no justification for a Bureau of Industries, and no necessity (as there certainly seems to be at present) for the Government to manage everything from poultry-farming to petrol-serving. "So near," therefore, was Mr. Fraser, in my opinion, to the solution of not only the problem of planning immigration, but also of reviving the giant heart of. our moribund social system.—l am, etc.,

PENSEROSO,