BRITISH MIGRANTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23111, 9 August 1938, Page 9

BRITISH MIGRANTS

POPULATING DOMINIONS ADVICE to GOVERNMENT LONDON, July 31 The Board of Empire Settlement has recommended to the Secretary of State for the Dominions, Lord Stanley, that an effort should be madu to populate the Dominions while there is yet time. The board's official journal states that, generally speaking, the Empire's birth rate is below the standard needed to maintain the Empire's population at its existing size; also, that while medical science has lengthened the expectation of life so considerably that a greater elderly population can be expected, thero will be a sharp decline in the total population if the fall in the birth rate continues. Referring to the old conception of migration as a means of getting rid of Britain's surplus unemployed, the journal states: " That is unfair to the unemployed, and is an offence to the Dominions, who are repelled by the suggestion that they should be as a dumping place for our surplus industrial population. "An encouraging feature of the situation is that Australia has decided to take stops-,) to renew the flow of emigration, and to avoid the mistakes of those earlier schemes, which caused a homeward flight on the part of disappointed, unsuccessful settlers."