IMPERIAL MIGRANTS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 10093, 4 September 1925, Page 3

IMPERIAL MIGRANTS

A SERIOUS PROBLEM

NOVEL IDEAS

(SPECIAL TO THE TIMES.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 2. In the course, of an interview with your correspondent to-day, Mr T. W. Raymond, of Woodlee. Downs, Southland, made some interesting and unusual observations on Empire migration. Mr Raymond, with the exception of a visit to New Zealand about a year ago, has spent the last twentyeight years mainly in England, where he did good work'for the New Zealand soldiers during the war, and also took a- prominent part in English politics. Mr Raymond expressed the opinion that the question of inter-Empire migration is now not only a national, but a world problem. He argues that though the Motherland is overstocked with people, she cannot spare her best for the Overseas Dominions, and that in any case it. is not easy for Britain to transfer hundreds of thousands of her people to the outer Empire. England has already been drained' of many of her best artisans and others., many of whom have gone to the United States and other countries, and yet she cannot at the present time employ her own people, and a country that cannot employ its own virile manhood is on. the down grade. “I am convinced,” lie said “that the only class that the Old Country can spare must come from those who are square pegs in round holes, and who will never do any good in their present environments either for themselves or their country. I do not mean the lower strata, but those above this. There are hundreds of thousands of these people who, if transferred to the Dominions in communities would in less than a decade prove desirable -and useful colonists, and relieve the Old Country from a class that the conditions there cannot and never will assimilate. The existing schemes of overseas settlement can be viewed as only tentative measures.

“The fact has to be recognised.” said Mr Raymond, “that the Dominnions can never be manufacturing communities. They can only he agrarian, indulging in limited manufactured production, and this can only he preserved by substantial import duties. No manufacturers can exist without a substantial home consumption, nor can a manufactory with 1030 operatives compete with a manufactory employing 10,00-0. Hence, only countries with an excess of population can hope to successfullv engage in the world competition with which they are confronted.

“The land alone offers the only possible avenue for occupation of the immigrant,” said Mr Raymond. “This avenue is rendered less attractive because ,of the fact that the Home Government refuses to concede preferences to the primary products of the Dominions, because of the parrot cry of the ignorant at Home “that your food will cost you more.” Tip's cry has successfully blocked Imperial reciprocity for the la.st twenty-one years. Unless the Home statesmen round on these Little Englanders and concede preferences (wool excepted) to Dominion producers over the alien, how can it be expected that those at Home will he disposed to go abroad and can he induced to remain within the Empire when the attractions of the Argentine and other coming countries in the north of South America are making the strides they are, mainly because labor is much cheaper than it is in the Dominions.

“My own view is that the Old Country could not under the most aggressive policy of inter-Empire migration supply more than 200,009 per annum,” said Mr Raymond. 1 'lt is clear, therefore, that it is the duty of the Dominion Governments to look to Northern Europe to assist in the peopling of their unoccupied territories. In ray opinion these peoples would Drove worthy, industrious and desirable colonists in even- I strongly favor ‘colony settlement.’ ”