WORKING WELL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19827, 29 April 1927, Page 7

WORKING WELL

OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT British Committee Reports on Last Year’s Operations MANY ASSISTED PASSAGES. [By Telegraph—Per Press Assn.—Copyright.] (A. & N.Z.) LONDON, April 26. The Overseas Settlement Committee’s report for 1926, marking the close of the first five years of the administration of the Empire Settlement Act, announces that the improving conditions overseas and further facilities for assisted passages have resulted in an increase of assisted migrants under the Act from 39,559 in 1925 to 66,103 in 1926, of whom 25,999 were children. The figures for Australia are 22,527 and 32,732, increase 10,205; Canada 8890 and 21,344; South Africa 126 and 232. In all, 11,795 settlers were assisted to New Zealand. Great Britain’s annual excess of births and immigration over deaths and emigration has fallen from 383,000 in 1911, to 175,806 in 1926. Tho net migration movement from Great Britain in 1926 was 115,538, against 84,259 in in 1925.

The report stresses the findings of the Imperial Conference sub-committee to the effect that future official action must be based on recognition of the fact fact that whilst the bulk of tho population here is urban, the Dominions’ settlement must be based on their agricultural development. The principal results of the sub-committee’s work have been to grant a free passage to women houseworkers to Australia, which is already operating, and new schemes for land settlement in New Zealand and rural housing in Australia, both of which are being arranged. The Australian £34,000,000 loan agreement of 1925 will be modified in view of the increasing number of schemes for the development of many of which there is already sanction. The sub-committoe welcomes the development of the Migration Committee, with which it proposes to keep in the closest touch, recognising that development and research are most effective in accelerating a redistribution of population. The report concludes by stressing the importance of agricultural training in the three English centres of Catterick, Claydon, and Crandon. It is intended ‘to shorten the courses, and increase the accommodation. A residential course in London is being arranged to prepare domestics for Australia in batches of 40.