THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1938 IMMIGRATION THE KEY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23228, 23 December 1938, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1938 IMMIGRATION THE KEY

! Supplementing the debate in the ! House of Commons on some larger j aspects of Empire migration comes a statement from Mr. Armstrong, Minister in charge of Immigration, on the« New Zealand viewpoint. The Commons turned their attcnj tion more to Imperial and interi national issues, while Mr. Armstrong discussed the Dominion's present requirements for particular classes of workers. The coincidence is surely a happy one for, however broad and enlightened a policy may appear, it will not succeed unless it be related to actual needs. Mr. Armstrong declares the Dominion needs more artisans and tradesmen, a requirement apparently forced upon his notice at his first review of the problems awaiting solution by the Housing and State Advances Departments, which have newly come under his direction. "We must obtain more skilled labour," he says, "and what we can't get in j our own country we must get elseIvhere." No disinterested person is ! likely to quarrel with this statement, provided that the unskilled already in the country are given a reasonable opportunity to qualify. I Many of them are debarred from ; regular employment because they I are unskilled and some thousands of them missed the chance of apprenticeship during the depression. These native-born have a prior claim if they wish, as many do, to assert it and it is one that the Government should not overlook. Even so, there should be scope for the carefully regulated and directed flow of immigrants that Mr. Armstrong has in mind. Properly organised, their arrival, settlement and absorption into industry should make more jobs available rather than less. Too often people are inclined to take a short-sighted view of immigration, arguing as if there were only a fixed •number of jobs in a country and that therefore new arrivals must displace New Zealanders or remain idle themselves. Thus they unconsciously write down or j limit the resources and capacity of ; the country they are prepared to j praise and magnify on every other ! occasion. On the other hand, the ! mover of the motion in the Comj mons calling on the British Govern- } ment to increase financial assistance ! for Empire migration, Mr. J. F. E. Crowder, emphasised the lesson of experience that an increase in production, employment and wages resulted from an increase in population. New Zealand is failing to make that increase in the best and most natural way—through the birthrate —and so must have recourse to immigration if the country is not to stagnate. The economic considerations brought forward by Mr. Crowder should be sufficient inducement, but in the subsequent debate the Dominions Secretary, Mr. Malcolm Mac Donald, stated a political motive which in these perilous times should be even more compelling. If British people did not develop the new and young countries, he said, they were open to the reproach of sitting in a vast area of the earth's surface and preventing its beneficial use. "Reproach " is a mild word to use when the overcrowded regions of South and East Europe are considered, to say nothing of Asia. More and more criticism is being directed against the Empire for what has been described as a dog-in-the-manger attitude. The sting could be taken out of the reproach and at the same time, as Mr. MacDonald points out, the Empire could be strengthened against the threat of aggression by the so-called "have-not" countries, by a better distribution of the British people over their Empire. Let it be repeated, however, that such large policies must be related to needs if they are to be successfully worked out. Mr. Mac Donald showed that he had a practical realisation of requirements in the Dominions at their present stage of development. The time has J passed forjhakirig land settlement the dominant objective of migration. The shrinking of markets for primary products owing to the policies of economic self-sufficiency being pursued more or less by all countries sets limits to agricultural expansion in new countries. Another material factor is that science and machinery are enabling man to supply his primary wants with less and less expenditure of man-power. Britain has seen farm production rise while her agricultural population fell by a million pairs of hands. New Zealand has vastly increased her output in the last decade, while her rural population remained stationary and actually declined Aover large areas. So Mr. Mac Donald rightly contended that if migration were to occur on the scale he had in mind —he spoke of "millions" —a sufficient outlet could not be found on the land, but must be opened up by the development of secondary industries in the Dominions. His view reinforces that taken by the New Zealand Government in recent statements on economic policy. Actually it is being forced upon this country by a variety of circumstances, financial, commercial and political. More population is the answer to many of our problems; only by industrial development can we support more population ; and more population is an' essential condition of industrial development. A larger domestic market would make many developments economically practicable and at the same time would ease the pressure on export markets. In fact, Mr. Armstrong keeps the key to New Zealand's future in the portfolio of immigration..