THE POPULATION PROBLEM.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13645, 13 July 1908, Page 7

THE POPULATION PROBLEM.

, J- ' The Hon. J. A. Miller (Minister for •_ Labour), in the-course of- a, reply to a deputation from' the .Wellington Waterside-. Workers' Conferences on Monday, stated that lie had .been keeping a critical :eye upon the population* problem. "It is too big a question," 1 he told the deputation who had some views upon the matter, "to discus; offhand." In his annual report which would be down before long (continued Mr. Millar), they would see figures that would simply stagger them, on account of the decrease 'of the number of children of a given age attending school. It would be impossible to keep up the industries of the Dominion, unless they maintained the population. (Hear, hear.) When he found that the figures stood as they did, it had quite (startled him. He had taken the records,; for the past 16 years, and the. decrease in ; the birth-rate'rind then went into the annual increase of factories and industries generally, and worked .out the number of men required-there, etc. I fc-.would be /impossible to maintain those industries . without a natural increase in the population. The school figures he had obtained from the Education Department's reports: "Itwas a very serious matter indeed;" 'he said, "and if the'co-iihtry had to .depend upon immigration }t was a though lie realised the value of good immigrants. This matter, no doubt, had its solution, and the best way of dealing with it- had not yet been decided up-, on, but ere long the present' Government or some 'other would have to deal with the matter in a practical way."