THE PROBLEM OF MIGRATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 115, Issue 19270, 31 May 1934, Page 4

THE PROBLEM OF MIGRATION.

“ Emigration in the future, to be successful, must be very carefully organised at both ends, and moreover, organised in a manner appropriate to the conditions of the present and the future, not of the past,” says Professor John Coatman, in Population, the journal of the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems. “ The old pioneering days are gone when emigration meant taking new land and breaking it in as a lone settler. “ The trend of agricultural development is definitely in the direction of more intensive cultivation of land already brought into cultivation, and farming to-day is as much a capitalist enterprise as manufacturing. Under modern conditions the immigrant farmer requires various kinds of machinery, power installation, water supply, fencing, etc., all of which necessitates a large initial capital outlay. A great waste of the country’s resources and much misery is involved if, after settlement of immigrants on tho land, it is found either that the market goes against them or that they cannot carry on through not having enough capital at the outset. “ A further factor is that in the future agriculture will not offer the same opportunities for the employment of labour as in the past. At tho time when Malthus wrote it required about 80 per cent, of the population of a country to raise its foodstuffs. The figuie foi advanced countries to-day is in the neighbourhood of 20 per cent. The application of scientific knowledge to agriculture, in the form of mechanical devices, soil fertilisers, scientific nutrition, and breeding of plants and animals is constantly reducing the number of persons required to produce the world’s food. The continuance of this progress means that a greater proportion of the population will be re- # quired to work in factories to make the machines, plant, and fertilisers, etc., for the farmer and a smaller proportion actually to work on the farm itself. “ Opportunities exist in many parts of the overseas Empire for more people to take up the closer settlement type of farming, such as dairy production and fruitgrowing, under conditions of life which would not be very different from, but much profitable than, those obtaining in the English countryside to-day. More important still, the potentialities of the Dominions for further development of manufacturing industries are very great. The raw materials are there, and tho high standard of living creates a natural nucleus of demand for every kind of manufacture. What is needed is, first, more people in order to attain a population large enough to support efficient units of manufacture under modern conditions and to lighten the burden of cost of railways, interest on Government loans, and the like; and, secondly, capital to start new industries and extend old ones.