Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY. SEP. 1, 1908 WANTED POPULATION.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 11370, 1 September 1908, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY. SEP. 1, 1908 WANTED POPULATION.

What is New Zealand's greatest need ? Some will reply capital to develop the rich resources of the country; some, railways and roads to open up the interior; others may regard the closer settlement of the land as being 'of primary importance, .whilst not a few look upon the ' future ' of -" the country as lying with the development of technical education, so that our young people may be trained to make more abuh- j dant use of the good things that Nature has provided. Al} these things are very good and necessary in their way, but they cannot be counted as of importance alongside the great and pressing need of peopling the land. Capital, • roadmg, land settlement, education, however prodigally advanced and furthered, will be to a very great ' extent wasted unless there are the people coming into the country to occupy tlie territory and to build up our national industries. We are glad to note that members of the Government aro taking xi broad and statesmanlike view of the situation and impressing th& fact of the population need upon the people. The Hon. Dr. Findlay, Attorney-General, in the course of a speech in the Legislative Council last week, put the matter, very clearly. Gould it be denied, he said that we were altogether too. small a- handful for such a splendid land as New Zealand? It comprised 104,751 square miles, which was one-seventh less than the area of Great Britain and Ireland; greater by a large extent than the whole of England and Scotland. Our population today was only a little larger than that of the city of Glasgow. For a country like this we should have expected more, rapid progress towards national greatness than was shown by the advance of the last twenty years. Every student knew that there were nations, that had doubled their wealth in thirteen years. W/lth a normal increase a country should double its population in twenty-five years. Before we had 2,000,000 people in New Zealand itwould require, if inimigrants were excluded, half a century. Ti that were compared with the progress of another country — at. any rate up to 1877— it would be seen how far we were behind as 1 a progressive country, if progress were to be measured by the number of inhabitants. The birth rate m 1886 was 5.31 per cent., in 1906 it was 3.31— a fall of 2.10 per cent, in a little over twenty years, or nearly 33| per cent. To give a startling illustration of what this meant : In 1878 we had not a high normal birth rate—something between 5 and 6 per cent. If the rate of population had been maintained to-day — irrespective of Maoris— we should have had 1,289,647 inhabitants instead of 908,726— showing that we had lost tln-ough the decline 381,000 rietive-born in thirty years. Was not thn.t a matter to be greatly deplored? In the figures there had to "be included the increase through immigration. Tlie 'exct-ss of arrivals over departures in thirty years was 134,153, so that in the mciease had to be included this number and their offspring. In 1878 there were forty-two children for every 1000 married women in New Zealand. In 1907 the number had fallen to 27.3 to every 1000. If the birth rate of 1878 had continued there would have been 15,000 more children born last year than were born. If the decline at the rate of the last twonty ' years continued, this country — not really ninety years oldwould in the absence of an immigration policy be decadent. Already the decline was profoundly affecting industrial life. The causes of the decline touched on physiology, religion, and social economics. One of tlie causes of the diminished rate was city life. In city life there was a more artificial element in life than was the case in the country. As a result of that artificial element there was a disposition to loss of physique, i