The Wanganui Chronicle FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1927. EMPIRE MIGRATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19827, 29 April 1927, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1927. EMPIRE MIGRATION

The Oversea Settlement Committee’s report for the past year a summary of which is cabled, shows an increasing amount of good work accomplished. The number of assisted emigrants was very substantially greater, and progress continues to be made in the matter of training emigrants in the work t ey may expect to have to undertake when they arrive m the oversea Dominions. . . The Committee has now three agricultural training centres in operation. It is hardly possible to over-stress the importance of these for, as the report points out, the Dominions chiefly want immigrants for agricultural work, while the bulk of the Old Country’s population is urban. Of the 37 J million people of England and Wales, over 30 millions, or 80 per cent., live in the towns and cities, and as a very large proportion of emigrants come from these, the importance, not to say the necessity, of these agricultural training centres ean easily be realised. The Committee reports that the balance of British emigration over immigration last year was 116,338, compared with 84 259 in 1925. On mere percentage this is a large increase, but the face of the situation is somewhat changed when the excess of births in the country is added to the immigration figures. With births and immigration combined, the total population, instead of being diminished, shows an increase, of 175,806 for the year. This fact affords some food for thought. ’ Popular opinion on the object of Empire migration is not so well informed as it might be. Responsible people and those in authority understand its purpose well enough, but both at Home and in the Dominions the average man’s view is a purely material one. He looks on it as a movement intended merely to secure utilitarian advantages and nothing else. He does not grasp the full meaning of the fact that, while it certainly does entail certain material benefit, its main object is something more, viz., the re-distribution of the Empire’s white population, with the two-fold aim of relieving the congestion at Home and filling the empty spaces of the Dominions, for the benefit of the Empire as a whole. It will not do to regard Empire migration merely as something which gives us a few new farmers and an additional supply of labourers and artisans desirable though these are. It means more than that. In normally prosperous times, New Zealand can take a certain quota of migrants and thus, in some way, assist in relieving congestion at Home as well as benefitting itself. But New Zealand has a very limited area of empty land. Therefore, the movement cannot have full play so far as this Dominion is concerned. To achieve its main objects, it must operate principally in those Dominions where there is ample room and to spare—Australia, Canada and South Africa. These ean take thousands where New Zealand can only take scores, and it is in these that success must be sought if empty lands are to be peopled and overcrowding in Britain relieved. But the figures published by the Oversea Settlement Committee show that, while the migration movement is adding to the Dominions’ populations, its effect in Britain is not as yet to eliminate overcrowding, although it certainly is doing something to prevent it getting very much worse. In spite of migration, Britain is adding 175,000 to its population per year, and, seeing that its density is already 649 per square mile, the vital necessity of re-distribution of population needs no emphasis. The movement is, of course, only in its early days yet, and no doubt will grow in volume. But immediate results in achieving relief of population pressure in Britain cannot be looked for; probably it will take ten times the present yearly emigration before any appreciable effect on Great Britain’s overcrowding is observable.