EMPIRE SETTLEMENT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 August 1924, Page 9

EMPIRE SETTLEMENT.

NEED FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING. JUVENILE MIGRATION. m a leadin 2 article the London Daily Telegraph returns to the subject- of Empire settlement and expresses the hope that an opportunity may be found clming the present session of continuing the discussion which took' place in Die House of Commons recent! v. 4 ‘There is urgent need for the Empire Settlement Act to. be understood in this country,” the writer of the aiticle proceeds, ’ where its existence is hardly known in many quarters. Even in ordinarily wiM-informed quartei s its main provisions are not generally familiar. However, now that the Government officially declares its fi iendliness, and is prepared to shoulder further financial responsibilities in respect to it,- we hope that these prejudicesinay be gradually dispelled. “We have scarcely vet begun ‘to talk population, as our great-grandfathers did a century ago, when Malthus and others terrified them with visions ol teeming millions and inadequate food supplies, but it will certainly come. Hie solution of the Imperial settlement problem is vital to the race and to the Pimp ire; a beginning has been made, but it is a small beginning onlv. The migration policy which the Government is prepared to assist must he, said Air. Lunn, ‘family jnigration first and foremost.’ ‘lf the husband,’ he said, ‘wants to go to the Dominions means must be found to enable the mother and children to no as w.ell.’ “Family migration, we do not doubt, is easily the best form of migration. But it is also the most difficult and the most costly, and we cannot help observing that if the colonisation of the British Empire had depended upon family migration, the population overseas would be nothing like even what it is to-day. We desire to see every foi ni of migration employed, so long as proper selection is made and there are adequate schemes fpr the- reception of the settlers on the other .side. Juvenile migration, for example, costs .infinitely less, and if it be found —as so many people expect that there is not work in this country to provide a career for all the young people who are leaving school every year, the surplus had much better go where. they have a chance—and a good chance—of success than remain here with no prospects hut rapiy demoralisation. Canada, said Mr. Lunn •asked for 17,590 children last year* but only 1100 went. .There is a large opening there; and so long as the interests of the young people are adequately safeguarded—which, we repeat, is an essential stipuation—such migration is easily the best start in life which they can he given.”