EMPIRE SETTLEMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19277, 15 September 1924, Page 8

EMPIRE SETTLEMENT

“NO MIRACLES YET WORKED.”

LONDON, September 1

“More than two years have passed since the Empire Settlement Act became law,” says The Times in a leading article, “and its best friends will not claim that it has worked any miracles. The two years have been years of promise and experiment rather than of achievement. The dominions have been too preoccupied with their own domestic difficulties to give attention to the question, which sooner or later must become the greatest • problem common to them all, apart from the financial burdens of the war. The most serious handicaps to the development of the dominions’ territories have been their own unemployment crises. It did not need a noisy protest to ensure a ca’-canny policy in the importation of fresh labour.” The Times suggests that 00-ordination is needed between the many excellent migration organisations, and also closer and permanent co-operation between English and dominion Government officials. “The tragedy to migration,” says the newspaper, “is the number of skilled workers lost to the Empire through sailing to America. No fewer than 14,000 embavked in 1923, representing a sevenfold increase in two years. Unfortunately, no amount of propaganda will counter the temptation of higher wages, hut as far as agricultural labour is concerned, there is abundant evidence of the awakening consciousness of the dominions to the possibilities of the Empire Settlement Act. For the first time in Australian history there appears the probability of the six States advancing together, instead oi pulling against one another. "The dominion authorities at Wembley make encouraging migration reports: hut the wealth of the Empire does not begin and end upon its farm land, and the lesson of the Exhibition will be lost if the best workers are allowed, in ever-increas-ing numbers, to go elsewhere than to their own kinsmen oversea.’*