The Dominion. MONDAY, APRIL 7, 1913. POPULATION & DEVELOPMENT

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1717, 7 April 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, APRIL 7, 1913. POPULATION & DEVELOPMENT

The Canadian representative on the Imperial Trade Commission, Mk. Foster, only expressed what most thoughtful visitors to Australasia think and say when he emphasised the Australasian need for population. If Australasia, he said (after referring to its vast potentialities), "could bo filled with a sturdy, enterprising population, the result of no miracle recorded in the world's history would be so great as this miracle would involve." This view will doubtless incense the Labour-Soeial-ists of both countries, for they arc bitterly opposed, to the suggestion that any _ encouragement should be given to industrious and courageous British people to come and settle in 1 this prosperous corner of tho globe. To the Labour-Socialists—and also to tho Opposition remnant, if we can judge from their virulent assaults on Mr. Massey for his advocacy of the view that this country would benefit from a considerable accession to its population—every new arrival is, not a pair of hands to. assist in developing the country, but an enemy of those Who arc already here. These people believe, or profess to believe, that New Zealand has lost its capacity to absorb population. But the facts which show this belief to be absurd aro so largo and plain that one muat conclude' that the real aim of these, enemies of tho newcomer is the preservation of a closo' markot for themselves. The fewer people there aro here, they argue to themselves, the better off "Labour" will be. Pushed to its logical conclusion—and that is the only way to test tho soundness of any principle—this doctrino of the La-bour-Socialist opponents of immigration involves the theory that everybody would be better.off if our population were to be lessened by ,a wholesale exodus of all classes. There arc, no doubt, some amongst the LabonrSocialists and the ordinary Oppositionists a few courageous but foolish people who will even admit that corollary of their doctrine. Yet New Zealand has for years been absorbinp population, and tho lot of the average wage-earner has been improved. The experience of Canada, into which'has llowcd a tide of immigration without parallel in history, disproves the absurd theory that tho greater .the population in a young and developing country of vast potentialities and resources the worse off it will be. Those who honestly believe that every immigrant is only another mouth to feed, and another competitor for somebody's "job," arc the modern counterparts of those who opposed the introduction of machinery as beinc certain to lead to the

starvation of nine-tenths of the handworkers. J list as the enemies of machinery were unable to see that the machinery would vastly multiply the production of consumable wealth, and so supply the nation with vastly greater resources for distribution, so those who would forbid the entry of neiv settlers or workers fail to see that every fresh worker is a fresh pair at hands in the business of increasing the national development. Every new arrival who can work usefully not'only supports himself but renders the nation as an economic entity richer and inoro efficient than before. These, of course, are elementary facts which arc none the less facts because a small section of shortsighted and wrong-headedly selfish people find thcmVlisagrceable and destructive of their aim and policy. When men of vast knowledge and experience, visiting New Zealand and anxious only to give disinterested and useful advice to a country of which they see the potentialities, all agree that the country is not so fully populated as it ought to be, only those who have the couragc of ignorance can maintain that New Zealand ought to set her face against immigration. We should like to know where New Zealand would be now had the Labour-Socialists of the past had their way; for at every stage of the country's development in the last two or threo decades there have been advocates of the closed door. However, the world goes on and develops, and when the population of New Zealand is five millions, and its pro-, .ductiveuess tenfold more than it is to-day, the people of that time will look back with astonishment upon the fact that in 1913 there was a party which was urging that ruin would follow any considerable growth of population.