Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1911. IMMIGRATION.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143586, 26 August 1911, Page 2

Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1911. IMMIGRATION.

While there is no doubt that New Zealand requires population uiTcl that a vigorous ami judicious immigration policy would he an excellent tiling-, the proposal of Sir Maurice O’Korke, that officers should be appointed in Ireland ami Scotland to facilitate emigration from those countries to this Dominion, ami that each immigrant of twenty-one years of age should receive forty acres of freehold laud in New Zealand, seems To us quite impracticable. In the iirst place there is not the land

available to give away. Thera Is a large unsatisfied demand for land within (lie Dominion, and the trovcnuuent appears quite unable to find Crown lands fast enough to meet it. While people on the spot cannot buy or lease lands from the Crown, it is no time to l:e offering: free gilts of forty acres each to immigrants. Then,, if th/ Government had the land to give away, we venture to think that forty acres of virgin forest, away in the back blocks, without reasonable access, would be of little use to immigrants. It is, - of course, quite out of the question for immigrants to be given forty acres of improved land. If there are gifts of that kind going there are thousands of people in the Dominion who would like and are entitled to a share. Experience has over and over again proved the futility of placing 'small settlers on second-class bush country far in advance of roads and railways. Of the large number settled in the Whangamamona Valley some fifteen years ago the majority were literally starved out after more or less protracted periods of struggle. In the Tonga po ruin Valley there may still be seen the ruins of small homesteads to warn against a similar attempt to place unsuitable people on unsuitable laud. Few men with colonial experience would dream of attempting to settle down on forty acres of such land as the State could give them now, and to place immigrants on such holdings would be to court certain failure. New Zealand wants immigrants, especially farmers with small means, but the offer of forty acres of such land as the Government can give is not likely to attract them. Canada can offer something that will appeal much more strongly to those who arc looking for free land. At the same time there is something to be said in favour of a bolder immigration policy. The advantages New Zealand has to offer to those who desire to emigrate from the Old Country might be brought much more vigorously before public notice iu the United Kingdom. The facilities for reaching - here might be improved. But we imagine that the greatest obstacle iu the way of our obtaining a larger share of the emigrants who annually leave the Old Country is the high cost of living and the heavy taxation imposed here. An intending emigrant’s first inquiry is as to the cost of

living in the country to which he is invited to go. If he is a working man he will hesitate to go to a country where almost everything' he will want to buy costs about double what he has been accustomed to pay. He may be able to get double the wagpe he has been receiving, but the fact that appeals to him most is that it will cost him a very great deal more to live. He may or may not get higher wages, but he must live. The one is a certainty, while the other contains an element of risk. He will have to pay 10s, 12s, or Ids a week for a cottage, but he has no guarantee that he will be able to earn wages in proportion; so lie looks for another field. The man with capital, be it little or much, wants to know what the taxation is, and it is very difficult to persuade him that tii ■> public debt and taxation in New Zealand are more apparent than real. If he is in a position to employ labour he naturally wants to know what it costs and what the conditions are, and as a rule he will turn down New Zealand as a country to emigrate to, because labour is dear and uncertain. When the question of an immigration policy is discussed it is as well that we should ask ourselves whether we would recommend our friends to come to New Zealand, and, if not, why not? Host people with means, we venture to say, would not advise their friends similarly situated to come here under existing conditions; and it is a well known fact t/iat the labour unions discourage the immigration of labour of any description. The first thing to be done then seems to be to ascertain why New Zealand is not a country to which, those within it can recommend their friends to come to. Having ascertained the reason, the next thing is to find a remedy and apply it, so as to make the country really attractive to emigrants from the 1 nited Kingdom a Then there would be no difficulty in securing a constantstream of immigration.