POPULATION PROBLEMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22833, 18 March 1936, Page 8

POPULATION PROBLEMS

Interest in the population problem in Japan —a very different problem from that presented in New Zealand—has been revived by the announcement from Tokio that the Government has been urged to give further encouragement to the fishing industry, as a means of absorbing a larger proportion of the country’s workers. The problem of overpopulation is not peculiar to Japan, although it is there that it is perhaps most seriously demonstrated. Italy is also facing a situation sufficiently grave to give cause for anxiety. In both countries the population is increasing. In the case of Italy the surplus of births over deaths has lately been estimated at about 400,000 annually, and in the case of Japan the surplus is said to be 900,000. Despite a decline in the Italian birth rate the expectation is that there will be an increase of approximately 8,000,000 in the population in the next quarter of a century. Japan, with a present population of about 68,000,000, is likely to add 10,000,000 to that staggering total by 1950. In her case, also, it has to be remembered that only about one-fifth of the total area of the country is capable of being cultivated, and that already roughly half of those in employment is engaged in work on the land or in the fishing industry. The conclusion of those who make a study of movements of population is that both of these countries are overcrowded, and may be expected to become more so in the next twenty years. Professor A. M. Carr Saunders, of Liverpool University, an acknowledged authoi-ity on population problems, points out that circumstances of domestic overcrowding cannot be held to justify the seizure of either Abyssinia or Manchuria. He emphasises, too, the commonly expressed belief that neither Italy nor Japan can hope to find a solution of her problems in conquest. The Japanese have none of the instincts of, a migratory people. Even now there is only a sprinkling of Japanese civilians in the annexed territory to the north of the Great Wall. Professor Carr Saunders sees for Italy one possible way out —the resumption of large-scale emigration to America, Australia and New Zealand. In one year before the war, he states, the whole surplus of births over deaths in Italy was removed by emigration. But this solution, apart from requiring a reversal of policies of discrimination against Southern Europeans, would involve also the transfer of emigrants to another flag. “All that can be said,” remarks the professor, “is that the hope of building up overseas a new Italy, or, for that matter, a new England, which will not in time demand recognition as an independent community, is illusory.” For Japan, he adds bluntly, no such solution is possible as long as the new countries are closed to Asiatics. In any case, he submits, it is relevant to ask “ how far a claim to anything can be created by the mere fact of over-population; for it is within the power of any community to regulate numbers, and the difficulty resulting from the failure to do so can hardly be held to create a. right to dispossess other people of their possessions.” The problem of new population, in all its aspects, is certainly not one that is escaping attention in the United States, or in either Australia or New Zealand. The depression forced the limitation of immigration —amounting to suspension—in this Dominion, as it did in the other countries named, and until circumstances can be held to justify a change none need bo anticipated. If and when the resumption of immigration is decided hpon, it will not be to Italy or Japan that we shall look for settlers or industrial workers. The development of foreign colonies can scarcely be envisaged as a normal part of this 1 country’s future growth.