POPULATION AND TRADE

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13649, 17 January 1908, Page 4

POPULATION AND TRADE

Considering the remarkable and sustained prosperity of New Zealand the figures of the Registrar-General for 1907 cannot be regarded as satisfactory. The imports of close upon £17,000,000 and the exports of over £20,000,000 are both records; and these only reflect that trade activity with which everybody in the Dominion is conversant. But the increase of population by no means corresponds to the commercial and industrial progress of the country. The total increase of population for the year is estimated as 20,295; which is within a hundred of the total increase for 3908 over 1905. 'In 1906 the total gain by excess of births over deaths was . almost exactly 10,500; as the excess of births over deaths is steadily increasing we may safely assume that small as our gain by immigration has been of recent years it was less in 1907 than in 1900. We may fairly ask, therefore, why the country does not attract more immigrants. It is declared to be the Paradise of the Workingman". and we are always being threatened with some new piece of legislation supposed to be designed in the interest of the wage earners. Times are undoubtedly good, work is constant and wages are set by sympathetic Courts. Yet there is no eagerness on the part of the neglected populations of unprogressive British States to come here. The fact is that we do not offer to British emigrants the Freehold which ail land-settlers desire : nor can all our tinkering with law affect the practical conditions of employment or establish artificial conditions sufficiently attractive to induce immigration upon any large scale.