SETTLEMENT AND POPULATION.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15783, 3 April 1919, Page 4

SETTLEMENT AND POPULATION.

rn a iUed questions of closer land eetSeS anl again raised by the Hou. (*• W. ® eneech to the Canterbury 1 regress League. The Minister asked the League whether with all the advantages of its early settlement, .the province of Canterbury had progressed as far as it should have done. The answer, of course, was “No.” Mr Russell is reported to have said the population of “the rural districts of Canterbury, extending from Kaikoura to Waitaki, ’ did not exceed 250,000, but, as the Auckland Star points out, either he made a mistake in his figures, or he has been misreported, for the whole population of the province at the 1916 census was only 178 000. When one' considers the fertility and extent of the Canterbury 'plains, and the value of great areas.of the hill country, and the ideal conditions under which the settlement was founded, these figures are disappointing. In 1881 Canterbury’s population was 112,000 and Auckland’s 99,000. In 1916 Auckland’s population was 308,000 and Canterbury’s 178,000. The census of 1916 showed Canterbury’s increase in five years to be only 5366 against Auckland’s 44,000. The details of the census revealed other proof that Canterbury was moving along too slowly; several of the counties showed decreases in population, and in others the increases were email. The province sowed a decrease in males and a large increase in females, whereas in the North Island there was a large increase in both males and females. With all its, natural wealth, Canterbury is making slow progress, and much of its young and virile population is being drained away through dhe better opportunities offered by the North Island, It has been pointed out more than onoe that this problem of the comparatively slow development of the South Island is a Dominion and not merely a provincial problem, and is part of the great question of closer settlement and general development. Land aggregation, the curse of Canterbury for so long, still hobbles the province. ~We may refer again to those very instructive figures 1 which the Lyttelton Times

prepared some time ago, showing that 'while the endeucy in the North Island was towards subdivision;, in the South Island it was towards aggregation. In estates of over 10,000 acres, over 20,000 acres, and over 50,000 acres the Canterbury figures for 1917-18 show increases over the figures of ten years ago, and in that time the average size of the Canterbury holding increased by nearly a hundred acres. The prevention o' land aggregation and further measures to break up big estates must be among the first tasks of the next Government. As Mr Russell says, “the days of big holdings -that are not worked as the requirements of the Dominion demand must end. Stf we are to develop our resources properly, increase our population rapidly, and keep the proper balance between rural and urban population, which shows signs of being overweighted on the wrong side, there must be a far more vigorous policy of land settlement than flic last few years have seen. As cultivation goes in some mffcli more densely populated lands, we have done no more than scratch the surface part of New Zealand. Mr Enesell thinks Canterbury could carry three or four times its present population. Of course it could. Belgium is smaller than the province, yet before the war jt had a population (of between seven and eight millions.