FUTURE OF MIGRATION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 118, 21 May 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

FUTURE OF MIGRATION.

Discussing the future of migration within the Empire, a contributor to the Times Trade and Engineering Supplement remarks:—“Failing some quite unpredictable occurrence, such as the discovery of a new Witwatersrand goldfield, there is little likelihood of any extensive, movement of population being seen in the immediate future. In fact, it may be doubted whether Great Britain will ever again send out the mighty river of high grade stock which left its shores during the nineteenth century—too often to be absorbed by the United States, either direct or by way of Canada. This country|is no longer breeding the pioneering element in large numbers. There arc still a few individuals of the type required, but they are few and far between, and the majority of our surplus population to-day consists of spoon-fed gregarious city dwellers, often spoilt only sons or at least members of small families in which the pressure to seek an outlet oversea does not exist as it was known to the large families of Victorian times. The increasing average age of the population, the dysgenie effects of the war, and the reluctance of the women to uproot themselves from their accustomed surroundings, are all factors which operate against the production of a type which would face the hardships and disappointments inseparable from tho opening up of a new country such as were overcome by the settlers of the nineteenth century.”