MIGRATION AND MARKETS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21744, 8 March 1934, Page 8

MIGRATION AND MARKETS

A few weeks ago the House of Commons agreed to a motion that the time had come when the Government should get in touch with the Governments of the Dominions with a view to putting forward a scheme for the voluntary redistribution of the white peoples of the Empire and the stimulation of shipping and trade under the flag. The mover, Sir A. Shirley Benn, said that even if it were necessary to borrow, ' there should be action to reduce unemployment and draw the people of the Empire together. The Dominions, he declared, must realise that the development of the Empire was their duty as well as the duty of Britain. How utterly irreconcilable are such proposals and ideas with the quota policy which the dairy interests of New Zealand are to consider next week. Certainly there is nothing to prevent a private member of the House of Commons submitting such a motion, or Sir H. Page Croft using it, as he did, to propound a scheme of mass migration under the aegis of an Emigration Corporation of "urn impeachable integrity and authority," but what gives the discussion its significance is that Mr. M. MacDonald, Under-Secretary for the Dominions, concluded the debate by declaring that the movement of emigration must.start again, and that the Government must have an emigration policy. Admittedly he spoke of its operating when times become more normal, but he made it clear that planning should take place with the Dominions as swiftly as possible. Actually the Government accepted the motion on the understanding that preliminary work now approaching finality should be completed first. Yet at the same time the British Department of Agriculture is pressing for the acceptance of a dairy quota by New Zealand and Australia; Canada and Australia are both struggling with a wheat surplus and the agreement to limit grain exports; and Empire beef exports are being curtailed. Wool, lamb and mutton ire the only important products of the temperate zones of the overseas Empire which are not encountering glut conditions. The hopes of the emigration from Britain to the Dominions are strictly limited to the markets available for the primary products of the Dominions. And it is worse than useless for the House of Commons to discuss co-operative action while Dominion markets are being menaced by the Department of Agriculture. If British agriculture insists upon quotas and British manufacture gains greater competitive power in the Dominions, emigration must remain an academic subject. The mass movement schemes will be obstructed by the same influences.