SURPLUS POPULATION

Evening Star, Issue 18137, 29 November 1922, Page 9

SURPLUS POPULATION

GREAT BRITAIN'S DIFFICULTY, A DISTURBING OUTLOOK. Press Association— By Tel(»gi'aph Cop yrigbi. ' LONDON, November 27. Mr Harold Cox (a. well-known writer on economic subjects), lecturing cm the unperial aspect of tho population under iho auspices of the AVomen s Guild of tho Empire, pointed out that Great Britan's population only began to excessive sinco tho industrial eia. nineteenth century produced a demand lo factory labor. Between 1901 and 191 iho increase tths greater than, tuougicu the eighteenth century. Iho increase co - tinned during the next decade, despite the heavy war losocs. Allowin'' for a small part of Arctic Canada and j fU go Pj 1, Australia, which were uninhabitable, immense tracts of those eountnes aware ■ cultivation. It tho dominions could absorb a tow millions o£ Britishers it would add immensely’vto tho happiness ot the human raeo • but Iho dominions did not want and would not have Britain’s excess urban population-. The Australian Labor t arty was bitterly opposed to all immigrationAll the present immigration schemes throughout the Empire would: not even absorb Britain’s yearly increase in population. Some Australian schemes esnimated that each settler would cost .j 1,009. Britain’s surplus millions c-ould not _ lie settled in tho dominions at such a prm He doubted tho wisdom of all fetate-aidcd immigration- AVhcn a. man emigrated at his own risk tho coat was generally made good; but hundreds of lil-n-te-auled- cxservico men recently drifted bade to England. Looking at all iho tacts, Empire migration could do very little in the, direction of relieving Britain's excess papulation, Ho believed the latter was partly due to tho social legislation of tho last twenty years sapping tho people’s sense oi self-reliance and responsibility regarding their offspring.—A. and N.Z. Cable.