MORE POPULATION

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1934, Page 15

MORE POPULATION

A PARAMOUNT NECESSITY.

LORD BLEDISLOE’S VIEWS

Auckland, May 31.

"There is one illusion prevalent in many new countries and current among some people in this Dominion which I should much like to dispel,” said his Excellency, Lord Bledisloe, speaking to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce this evening. “This is that an increase in the population by immigration, especially during periods of industrial depression and unemployment, is necessarily a national liability rather than a national asset.

“All self-respecting communities rightly deprecate admitting within their borders the indigent riff-raff of the surplus population of other countries, whether British or foreign. Such a process can only add to a nation’s burdens. But it is well worthy of careful consideration in a country containing a great expense of potentially fertile, But at present unoccupied land, an ideal climate and an expensive national equipment in roads, railways, electric supply and other public services adequate for a population four times as large as it possesses, whether the filling of some of its vacant spaces not only with untrained youths from the towns who have an aptitude for rural pursuits, but also with self-respecting, industrious and physically capable immigrants who, as owners as well as cultivators of the land, will support themselves and their families out of the produce of their small holdings without any appreciable competition with producers for export, would not be a sound and profitable business proposition from the national standpoint. It would increase the number of shoulders which at present carry the relatively heavy financial burden of public services, it would bring additional custom to urban industries, mines and shopkeepers, and incidentally would reduce public expenditure upon the destruction of ragwort, gorse, and other noxious weeds which infect derelict, farm land.

“Increased population and a comprehensive soil survey as a condition precedent to confident land settlement are the paramount needs of this Dominion—the foundation stones of a r.ew and more stable national economic structure. But even pending their realisation, in a territory where nature is so incomparably beneficent, i shoul’- man be timid in industrial enterprise or hopeful experiment? Shakespeare tells us that ‘there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.’ Such a tide is even now lapping your shores, inviting your embarkation, if, throwing to the winds all prejudice and ultra-conservatism, you will but realise it. Why leave others, less highly favoured, to reap commercial advantage which should flow into your own coffers?”