THE TOWNWARD DRIFT.

Wairarapa Age, 22 May 1928, Page 5

THE TOWNWARD DRIFT.

OBSERVATIONS BY THE HON A. D. McLEOD Speaking in Wellington recently, the Hon. A. D. McLeod dealt, amongst other things, with exaggerated statements that have been made in some quarters regarding a decline of rural population in New Zealand. “The dissemination of untrue assertions challenging the value of assets,” the Minister of Lands observed, “is almost as trying for a country as for an individual, with the added difficulty that those guiding the country’s financial destinies cannot seek the protection of a court, as can the individual in like circumstances. I have recently had occasion to expose the malicious statements of those misquoting statistics for their own purposes in relation to the number of men and women who had left the land for cities. The agricultural statistics are prepared to show how many males and females are actually engaged for the major portion of their time in one or other phases of pastoral dairying and agricultural work. The periodical census figures show how many thousands of females are in rural districts employed ’n domestic as well as other duties, but their disappearance from primary statistics does not prove their migration to tho cities. Every periodical census enumeration d |<s certainly show an alarming increase in urban population in practically all civilised countries, but this arises from causes other than that put forward by Mr. Semple, who, I notice in a public utterance made recently, estimates the migration si. far as New Zealand is concerned at 15 000 in the last five years. ’ ’