AN ENTICING PROPOSAL

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 69 (Supplement)

AN ENTICING PROPOSAL

(“New Zealand Times,” April 22. 1503.) Mr Alley, whose views appeared in our columns a lew days ago, put an uncommonly strong appeal into a space unusually brief. "You are sending your produce to South Africa, where there are no people, and you have in Canada and America an euormaus population reaay to take your goods, and unable, moreover, because of the conditions of climate, to produce many of the articles which you are able to send to them/’ Ti.e sentence forcibly suggests a compel ison. Canada just now enjoys extraordinary prosperity. The world has discovered that there are millions of aci es there ready ror the plough, seamed witJi railways managed on enlightened principles. It has, at the same time, found that while these railways practically annihilate distance, the State gives these grand lands away for practically nothing more serious than the conditions necessary to ensure their cultivation. Fj cm everywhere there i», consequently, u Push of population so voluminous and fertilising that all the statistical landmarks are submerged. The other day the Canadian Statistical Department published vast arrays of figures, with the object of demonstrating the effect of the recently established preferential tariff. Bur the most diligent and most carefully analytical study can make little of them, simply because the phenomenal prosperity of the country makes nothing of the figures. Last year the attraction of the land drew from the United Kingdom to Canada 68,000 people, 52,000 from South Africa —let that be marked—and 15,000 from Australia, not Australasia, be it understood. There was in addition a very largo influx over the United States border. The American authorities, federal and State, are making great efforts to stem the tide of emigration to Canada. Warning pamphlets, official statistics (with a leaning like the tower of Pisa), novels with a purpose, appeals to patriotism, a vast literature of advice, is piled up in the gaps by armies of paid agents, the flower of the smartest “bagman” element in the world. All is, however, in vain ; tnc tide rushes through with increasing volume. The coming northern summer will, according to all the observers, show a stream of the best order of population of greater bulk than ever. Ontario alone, not the- largest portion of the Dominion by any means, has a certainty of 200,000 new arrivals. That single province is ready to drain off from o! :»er

countries an increment equal in fosir years to tlio whole population Avhicn it lias taken New Zealand sixty years to build up. Thus we have in Canada & people increasing by leaps and bounds, entirely by voluntary effort, which moans that the increase is of people with agricultural knowledge, and the means to put it to most practical use. It lias been pointed out that the cash spent by this extraordinaz-y immigration must make things “hump Canada, it is clear, is getting her own at last, and the opportunities for trade must necessarily bo great, as they always are where there is much cash. South Africa, on the other side of the comparison, has not much to offer. The Boer problem weighs on a devastated country, which has an embarrassing native difficulty ever present. South Africa has, uo doubt, a great future, and we have done '.veil to endeavour to secure that share in the coming prosperity which we have made such sacrifices to make possible under the British flag. . But if it was good policy to estaonsli firm relations wiun a people whovse brilliant destiny is yet obscured by clouds, of which the passing is a matter of time, how much better must it be to reach a hand out to a people, also under the British flag, and likely, to remain under it at least as long ah om selves, who are in possession of the philosopher’s stone. The Canadas will be the centre of a vast production, chief* Iv of grain, for many years. But New Zealand produces meat and dairy produce at a time when the broad acres of Canada are frost bound. Over the Can* aehan border, moreover, are large popup* lotions, which can take one at least of our products, wool, in great tlie leading fact of whose wool product lion is that in twenty years the n uin* her of their sheep has gone down ten millions, whilo the number of their people has gone up by several times that laige figure.. Theso two facts—the general prosperity of Canada, and the dwindling wool production of America—merit the mast favourable consideration at the bands of tho progressive people of New Zealand. If our people arc as enterprising as they have been in the past, and as they ought to after their great development, now in the heyday of their own expansion, the British line 'of vessels offered by Mi* Alley ought to make that consideration not only favourable, but short.