MIGRATION MOVES

Evening Star, Issue 21628, 25 January 1934, Page 13

MIGRATION MOVES

EFFECTS OF SLUMP HEW ZEALAND'S LOSSES Departures from New Zealand have exceeded arrivals during the depression, but Britain has actually gained population on migration balance each' quarter since the third quarter (remarks Dr E. P. Neale in the ISiew Zealand ‘Accountants’ Journal’). The writer refers to the flow of population to young countries, when they are prosperous, and to the ebb during hard times. He gives the following instances of migration from new countries; 1890 and 1891 were years of depression in both Argentina and Italy; yet there was an enormous volume of re-emigration in those years. In 1876 the number of British and Irish returning from the United States was actually 143 more than the number going there. Depression had been prevailing for almost the same period in both countries. Similar abnormal departures from" the United States were indeed recorded in 1874, 1875, 1894, 1895, and 1908—all years of depression both in the United States and in Great Britain. Similarly swollen .departure figures from Australia and New Zealand have been noted in years of depression, e.g., in tho last eighties of last century and during tho past three years. There were increased departure figures for South Africa in 1907 and 1908—both years of recession and depression throughout Europe as well as in South Africa. The years 1893-1903 were characterised by cumulative prosperity in both the United States and Canada. Yet there was a considerable migratory movement from the United States to Canada—i.e., from the older to the newer land—which was checked in 1904 when mild depression supervened in both. The vast immigration increase in the seventies in New Zealand was the direct outcome of the Vogel policy. The reaction from the somewhat fictitious prosperity of the Vogel period is very obvious in the increased departures of the eighties and early nineties. The emigration figures from 1885 to 1891 are moreover officially admitted to understate the position, it being obvious from comparison of the results of the 1886 and 1891 census takings that numerous emigrants had been missed from the returns, probably owing to a desire on the part of the shipping companies furnishing the returns to conceal the fact that at the depth of the depression they were carrying away from the country many more passengers than the legal maximum.