The MANAWATU DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1935. Empire Migration

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 300, 20 December 1935, Page 12

The MANAWATU DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1935. Empire Migration

According to a cable in to-day ’b issue the House o Commons took time from its major problem of the Hoare-Lavai peace fiasco to consider the question of Empire migration. Following a debate the Government is appointing an Gmpnc Settlement Board to examine schemes for restarting migration, and various schemes will be submitted to the Government overseas Which if accepted will be promptly put into operation.

How complex the question of method can be appears from even a short cross-section of opinion, says the Times in discussing the problems of Empire migration. In the desire to secure a redistribution of population quickly, some advocate the mass transference of emigrants oversea, there to be settled in more or less self-sufficient communities. Others would be content, at least for the present, with settlement by infiltration, reviving perhaps the system of individual nomination and assisted passages.

Implicit in both is the assumption that emigration to be effective as is desirable should be aided by the State. It was precisely to this point that the Inter-Departmental Committee addressed itself in its inquiry last year, and it would be a loss if tlie very real objections which the committee raised to laige State expenditure in aid of emigration were overlooked in picsent discussion.

The majority of emigrants to the countries of the Einpiic have always been those who have gone mainly on their own resources, only by prospects of bettering theii fortunes. This stream will begin to flow of itself once again as economic conditions in the Dominions tend to improve. Already the movement by which some of the Dominions’ actually lost population on balance to the United Kingdom in the years of depression has been reversed.