NEED FOR IMMIGRATION

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1929, Page 9

NEED FOR IMMIGRATION

HOME MARKET FOR OUTPUT SECONDARY INDUSTRY’S LIFE GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S PLEA By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. .Taking the secondary industries as the keynote of his address, the GovernorGeneral, Sir Charles Fergusson, at the i opening of the Wellington winter show, suggested that practically the only way in which to further advance the secondary industries in New Zealand was by the encouragement of immigration, thereby creating the only market there could be for the present for Dominion pryducts —a home market. “How are the secondary industries going to flourish?’’ asked His Excellency. At present, he said, they could not get beyond a certain point until they had a bigger population. That was how it struck him in a broad way. They must have a sufficiently large homo market in which to sell their goods from the secondary industries and larger production at a reasonably low cost, “What is going to be our population?” asked His Excellency. At present he was told there could be no increase in immigration in New Zealand. “I must accept that as being an economic necessity,” he continued, “but it does not prevent me from lamenting the fact that there should be any restriction put on tiie development of the population in this country. It must be remembered that the immigrants who come to New Zealand are not the people who take the bread out of our mouths. Immigrants, provided they are of the right sort, are going to be an asset to the country. They are going to be producers, and more than that, they arc going to be consumers. What they are going to consume are the products of our secondary industries, but so long as there is a limited population the secondary industries cannot get beyond a certain point. Double your population and your industries will develop in proportion, “It is a controversial matter, but a matter well brought forward for consideration and discussion is whether, with tlie necessity of limiting immigration, we should not so try to arrange matters that we welcome immigrants I so long as they are, of course, the right stamp. By the right stamp I mean those who come out prepared to work on the land. We do not want them to come into our limited population and augment the already overcrowded cities. There is ample scope for them in developing the primary products of the country and working on the land. “If the boys of New Zealand will recognise that the way in which they can best help their country is by doing as their fathers and forefathers did of old, by developing the land, then you would hear none of this talk about boys leaving school and being unable to Like up their life’s work. You would be able to build up a population on. the land ten times as big as that of to-day, and then there would be a chance for the secondary industries.. That seems to be the most insistent problem of the present time —how to develop New Zealand,

“1 don’t like to say it is standing still—that would not be true —but the country is being terribly arrested in its development by the fact that we cannot encourage immigration. I think that is a misfortune and I should like in the next few years to see these restrictions eliminated.”