The Evening Star FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1937. IMMIGRATION.

Evening Star, Issue 22577, 19 February 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1937. IMMIGRATION.

The motion which the council of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce has passed on the subject of immigration can be endorsed, for the reason that it stops short at the right place. The motion stated that, in the opinion of the council, the time was opportune for the Government to reconsider the question of immigration, and it recommended that the Government should institute an urgent inquiry into the matter. Consideration of the question, “ with the approach of better times,” as on© member put it, is due, and the inquiry may well be “ urgent,” so long as that term is not taken to mean that it shall be hurried or less than thorough. If the council had said that the time was ripe for a resumption of immigration and that that policy should be resumed at once there would have been strong grounds for taking issue with its opinion. It was absurd to say, as was said at times during its earlier progress, that the unemployment associated with the depression which has now passed was caused by the then Government’s policy of assisted immigration. The average number of immigrants received over the term 1921 to 1926 about 10,000 a year—-was not much more than a fourth of the number admitted in 1874, which saw the peak number of an earlier period. The slump was due t° other and general causes. At the same time it is unquestionable that the immigration which had preceded it, causing large additions to the population either unabsorbed, or absorbed at the expense of others, had its influence in augmenting unemployment when the bad days began. Now, for five years past there have been more departures from than arrivals in New Zealand, and that is an unnatural swing of the pendulum. More population is needed in this country for its safety from aggression, and, in the long view, for its material progress and prosperity. The costs of government will be felt less, spread over a larger number. The demand which will cause to be built up more and larger secondary industries giving new strength to internal resources whenever the prices for oversea exports may chance to decline, cannot bo established otherwise. But the need is not merely for more consumers, who might be provided by new immigrants. It is most essential that they should be effective consumers, and that means that they must have either money of their own or work which will produce money from the time when they arrive. Immigration must be planned a great deal more carefully than it was in the latest experience of it. Otherwise there will be danger of the first consequences of it being painful, whatever the later consequences may be. Professor A. W. Tocker, of Christchurch, surveys the whole question from an economist’s standpoint in the latest 1 Financial Times.’ He admits the broad case for immigration, and points out that in the past it has depended more, perhaps, upon the general economic conditions prevailing than upon any efforts of Governments to encourage it. When the export industries expand other industries do likewise, and absorptive capacity naturally is increased. The professor finds that " the chances of New Zealand’s export industries finding expanding markets in which to sell increased production are now better than they were recently. But they are not yet such as would justify the expectation of unlimited expansion which was associated with heavy immigration in the past.” He points out that in the past relatively free movements of people have been associated with relatively free movement of goods and of capital between countries, and those are not the conditions of to-day. Again, “in the past expansion of both production and population was associated with and largely dependent on freedom of enterprise and flexibility of organisation within the country. The recent and present trend is to depart ever farther from such conditions. Increasing State regulation, the licensing of and the tendency towards monopolisation in industry, the control of transport, the wage fixing system, unemployment relief, high taxation, all these in combination tend to add to internal prices and costs of production and to limit freedom of enterprise and flexibility of structure.” The effect is to reduce the numbers of the optimum population and decrease the country’s absorptive capacity. The conclusion from this view would be that the Government, which has not been very committal on the subject of immigration, is not making conditions favourable to it by its general policy.