SURPLUS POPULATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17492, 28 August 1928, Page 6

SURPLUS POPULATION.

In hi ' address in Canada, Viscount Peel, oue of the British Parliamentary delegation, last week emphasised the fact that one of the greatest problems facing the Empire is the distribution of population. The task of apportioning the world's people has been widely discussed during recent years; innumerable solutions have been put forward; much money has been expended in the efforts to make the various schemes bear fruit, but although large numbers have been transported, it is generally conceded that the work done has been infinitesimal compared with that which lies ahead. The congestion in Britain is so great that the population aggregates 70i to the square mile; in the Commonwealth and Canada the population to the mile is but two; in New Zealand it is 11 J. The gap is far too wide. In the Mother Country the population is clearly too large; the country is incapable of finding remunerative employment for such numbers. In the Commonwealth and Canada, and to a less extent in New Zealand, the population is altogether too small, more especially the rural population, since, whatever may bo said regarding secondary industries, it is the country—the flocks and herds, grain, wool, butler and similar products —that provides the wealth, and it seems highly improbable that it will be otherwise for centuries to come, indeed, considering our geographical position, it is difficult to imagine a time when these present great sources of wealth will be supplanted—when we will become a manufacturing country except for own consumption. Writing in the Observer, Mr J. Rarnsay MacOonald, the leader of the Labour Party in the Mother Country, says that though emigration is not always caused by the pressure of population on subsistence, a very substantial part of it is, and every restriction put upon it by countries controlling the habitable open spaces of the world means that somewhere else congestion is being caused. Germany, Poland, Italy and Great Britain have their social difficulties intensified by restricted emigration. Has, he says, a nation a political or a moral right to refuse to receive immigrants? A plain Yes or No cannot be given in answer. No political community can hoard soil, and, whilst putting it to no use itself, or having no prospect of being able to use it within a reasonable time, debar people coming from abroad to settle on it. But, on the other hand no people of low standards of living have a right to dump surplus population and swamp communities of a higher social organisation. The very difficult question of tho intermingling of diverse races is involved. After considering the question from various angles, the Leader of the Labour Party concludes an interesting resume of the problem thus: Wc arc driven back upon the problem of population itself. Can a Stale adopt means of keeping its population within (he limits of its own economic possibilities? If it could, it would not only solve for itself problems of Imperialism, standards of life and health, perhaps internal revolution and external war, but, for itself and the rest, of the world, it would help to keep food prices down from famine levels and allow an orderly settlement of those open areas whoso climate and conditions enable them to become the homes of men who have inherited tho gains of a temperate civilisation. The easing of the pressure of population which has hitherto been done by emigralion must therefore be put as a responsibility on the shoulders of the States."