THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1935 EMPIRE MIGRATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22205, 4 September 1935, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1935 EMPIRE MIGRATION

Lord Bledisloe possesses such a firm and practical grasp on New Zealand problems economic, social and political—that he is not likely in his letter to the Times to have suggested an immediate resumption of emigration from Britain to the Dominion. There can be little doubt that he wats looking to a future when favourable conditions will have been re-established in this country. His main idea seems to be that Britain and Xew Zealand (no doubt the other Dominions are included) should think out in advance i:heir policy against that day, so that they may not again use ha.phazard methods. These latter did not always produce happy results. There were misses as well as hits and at present there is a substantial trend back from the Dominions to Britain. Such remigrants in the three years 1931-33 reached the surprising total of 118,747, of whom about 60,000 were former British immigrants to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Little imagination is needed to give some idea of the waste involved and the disappointed hopes. The people concerned have not only been themselves discouraged, but will discourage others from making the venture overseas. Britain and the Dominions must, manage better at the next opportunity, but they will not do so unless they work from a more concrete foundation than the vague idea thais, as it used to be stated, "the vast open spaces of the Empire should be peopled." The whole thing must be carefully thought out, first on broad lines and then :in detail. That, apparently, is Lord Bledisloe'a idea. He advocates the eutablishmeiat, with the concurrence of the Dominions, of a Royal Commission, to explore the possibilities and examine them The Empire should first collect the data and then decide what had best be done. That is the common sense of miration in these days, when supply in most directions has caught up on demand arid when, therefore, more careful adjustments are needed than :in the earlier phases of Empire migration.

Support of Lord BledisJoe's proposal is given by the Times, which goes further in urging the establishment of si permanent organisation to collect and analyse information on Imperial resources, production, trade and markets for the guidance of Empire Governments. That is a much larger proposition and Buch a continuous inurvey of Empire needs and opportunities could be very useful. It would assist in cushioning a large part of the world against economic bumps and in restraining unhealthy booms. But to be effective it would require a greater disposition to cooperate and co-ordinate than is at present apparent, even within the Britiuh Commonwealth of Nations. Some of the Dominions, and perhaps some of the colonies, would be certain to regard such a permanent commission with suspicion, as designed to check favoured lines of development for Britain's benefit or as a limit on their freedom. Hence it would probably be better to make a beginning as Lord Bledisloe suggests. A temporary commission with a limited objective, future migration, is more likely to prove generally acceptable. In practice such a commission would soon find that, to return fully considered recommendations, it would have to launch out upon something closely resembling the Imperial survey ithe Times suggests. This for the reason that migration, if it is to be successful, cannot be considered as a thing apart, but must be subordinate to general economic policy. To take an example, Lord Bledisloe assumes, as do most commentators on the subject both in Britain and the Dominions, that British emigration would be directed to developing Dominion primary industries. A commission could set out to discover whether much uuitable land remained to fit the assumption, and whether, if its development were held to be economically justified, markets existed to absorb :its produce. That finding might go further and declare that, from the standpoint of Imperial economics, the development of a new area, should proceed at the expense of existing productive "units. So, in setting out to discover true migration objectives and avoid false trails, the Empire might to its profit find itself concerned with definitions of economic lines of production for its various members and statements of artificial trends that should be corrected. That this would almost certainly result is proved by the report of the British Inter-Depart-mental Committee on Migration Policy. It found itself a good deal concerned with economics and especially with British agricultural policy. Its first criterion, to be applied to every scheme of migration, was whether there existed a reasonably secure and available market for a considerable portion of the migrant's labour. It follows, the report points out, that the British Government can give no greater or more direct stimulus to migration than by assisting to create increased markets in Britain or elsewhere for the Dominion producer, and thereby breaking the vicious circle by which low returns to the producer and low purchasing power in Britain result from and are caused by one another. So, as one commentator on the report

remarked, it is Mr, Walter Elliot who has in his hands the future of emigration to the primary producing areas of the Dominions. That, however, is from the British viewpoint. But Empire migration is not going to proceed very far if the Dominions see only the mote of agricultural protection in Britain's eye and ignore the high tariff beam obstructing their own vision. In obtaining the wider view, in gaining Imperial perspective, in substituting enlightened for blind and narrow self-interest and economic self-suffi-ciency, Lord Bledisloe's suggested commission should perform a useful function and perhaps exercise a profound influence on the Empire's future welfare.