NEW POPULATION.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20483, 8 December 1934, Page 17

NEW POPULATION.

Migration Possibilities Reviewed. AN EMPIRE ESSENTIAL. WELLINGTON, December 7. An important address on Empire migration was made to-day by Mr Malcolm MacDonald, in reply to statements made by Mr A. Leigh Hunt. Mrs Barrer and Mr C. S. Falconer, representing the Dominion Settlement Association, and who had spoken on similar lines to those expressed at the conference some weeks ago. Mr MacDonald said he would like to have copies of the speeches to take away with him, because some of the statements which had been made were rather in the nature of news to him, therefore he wished to study the remarks carefully when he left Wellington. He did not agree with Mr Hunt that the report of the inter-depart-mental committee in Great Britain was rather despondent, but thought Mr Falconer put his finger on the spot in the remark that apparently the despondent note was caused by the fact that the newspapers received only a summary, which contained mainly negative instead of positive parts of the report. Mr MacDonald characterised the report as taking the attitude that even if group settlement could be established successfully, conditions were such that community settlement could not possibly absorb more than a few thousand people a year. What they really wanted was to go back to the migration of many scores of thousands, and what the report said was that they had to recognise that a large flow of migrants would consist of individuals and individual families going out. scores of thousands, not to any particular settlement, but to take part in settlement and in industries and professions in existing communities, settlement by infiltration in the cities and country of the dominions. He thought the time would arrive

shortly when economic conditions would have recovered and the dominions were going to benefit from the flow of new population. lie believed it was absolutely essential from the point of view of the Empire that migration should start again as soon as it was wise and possible to do sq.