OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20086, 30 April 1927, Page 10

OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT.

Tue latest report of tho Overseas Settlement Committee supplies some interesting figures relative to migration. There was an exodus from Great Britain last year of 115,638 persons, an increase of over 31,000 as compared with the previous year. Bather more than half of these persons, including, of course, a considerable proportion of children, were assisted migrants under the Empire Settlement Act, who were absorbed by the dominions to the increased extent of 26,544 as compared with 1025. It will be noted that the increase of migration within the Empire accounts for very nearly the whole increase in the net migration that is recorded. The overseas Settlement Committee places pertinent emphasis on the finding of the Imperial Conference to tho effect that future official action must be based on a recognition of tho fact that, while the bulk of the population in Great Britain is urban, settlement in the dominions must bo based on agricultural development. It is manifestly desirable and important that those who come to the dominions as immigrants should have a good idea of the conditions which will there confront thorn. Sometimes thoy labour under very erroneous impressions. An instance in point was a subject of discussion at a meeting of the Wellington Hospital Board this week. Probably the misapprehension under which some of the immigrant labour are in the majority of cases due to their own misinterpretation of the information that is given to them, or to simple want of care bn their part in the ascertainment of the conditions to which they are coming. The suggestion was made at the Wellington Hospital Board meeting that the disillusionment which some few immigrants experience is an outcome of misrepresentation on the part of the Government and the shipping companies. “Misrepresentation” would seem to be an unnecessarily harsh word to use In such a connection. No doubt, glowing accounts are given of New Zealand as a land offering great opportunities for settlers of tho right kind, but presumably nobody will deny that an attractive picture can justly be painted of this portion of the Empire with its prosperity, its productivity, and its empty spaces and sparse population. The Government of tho Dominion is, however, wisely not committing itself to any fresh undertakings with respect to immigration so long aa there Is any extensive volume of unemployment in the Dominion. While there is no question of the capacity of this country to support a very much greater population than it does, care is of course necessary to ensure that the volume of immigration is at no time greater than the country’s immediate power of absorption. This explains why redistribution of population within the Empire is necessarily but a slow process. It is admitted, oven by tho leader of tho Labour Party in New Zealand, that tho Dominion oould easily carry a population of ton millions. The future will no doubt prove that this estimate is well within the mark. And in tho face of that conclusion tho protests against immigration which so frequently emanate from members of tho Labour Party cannot be logically sustained, always provided that the Dominion is industrially in a position, at the time the immigrants arrive, to absorb them and provide a footing for them.