THE CENSUS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2902, 14 October 1916, Page 11

THE CENSUS

WHAT IT WILL REVEAL

MOVEMENTS 0F POPULATION

The census to .bo taken to-morrow night is not.so much;required to ascertain the number of people in tho Dominion as it is to discover tho location of the population for electoral-purposes, and to obtain information' concerning a variety of social and industrial mattors for the use of tho statistician and the- politician,- and, it may be hoped, for the benefit of the public. If the only object of the elaborate arrangements now being made for the quinquennial "stock-taking" were to determine by how many thousands tho nation has grown sinco last it was counted, it would be .scarcely worth the money' it will cost. Month by month the -Government . Statistician : issues an estimate of the population tho Dominion prepared from the official returns of immigration and emigration and of births and deaths, and during recent years this estimate has anticipated within a very few hundreds all the information the census has been able to give on this point. In 1911 it differed by only 1707 from the formal enumeration, and in 1906 by no more than 1393, thus testifying in a very striking way to the care-and thoroughness with which Mr. Malcolm Fraser docs his work.- •!

But the immigration 'returns and the vital _ statistics throw no light' on the location of the population. ' They do not distinguish between district or provinces, nor even between the -"two islands: - The immigrant and the new born baby>are simply units in spelling the ; -general- total.. It .is necessary, therefore, in order to -meet the requirements of our system of Parliamenjary representation to find out at each census exactly wliere every inSividual re--sides, so that lie may be' included in the'constituency to which he properly ; belongs, and, if ho happens to live in the . country, so that lie. may help in augmenting the advantage given to'the rural electorates. The system makes ijopulation the basis of representation, but it provides that in calculating the number of persons needed to coirstit'ute an electorate 28 per ccnt. shall be added to tho rural population, tile population, that is, residing outside city areas and boroughs, with 2000 or inore inhabitants, and in giving cffect\to this provision the authorities must-have the very fullest information that can be secured by personal, investigation. But while nothing short of such. an enumeration as will take place to-morrow night can supply the Representation Commissioners with such precise details as they need in readjusting the electoral boundaries, it is possible to obtain a fairly good idea •of the movements of population since 1911 by another process. Experience has shown that with both men: and women exercising the franchise, and with a keen contest between the parties, the number of naines on a roll represents about 56 per cent, of the population of. the electorate with which it deals. Applying this assumption to the election of 1914 s and making allowance for Waimarmo, where the roll was obviously much -larger than it should have been, it has been found v that the result approximates very closely to the.. Government Statistician's official estimate. The case ol' Waima.rino is In the other seventyfive, constituencies the percentage of votes polled to the names on the roll varied from 79 per cent, to 90 per cent., the average being 84.66 per cent., but :; in Mr.i.B. W.- Smitli's.'constituency the figure! wa,Sjonly. ()8.02 per cent. i;,Jt. 'is-tinie success, was assured his opponents • can"'liave ha'd little'encouragement to record their .votes,' but' much the same conditions must have prevailed in Franklin, where' a still more hopeless attack upon Air. Alassey brought 85.20 per cent, of the'electors to the poll. An explanation is available, but it is not pertinent: ,to the purpose of the present review. A similar test to the one that has just been cited cannot be applied to any speculation in regard to tho movements of population since 1914, but tho following figures, compiled on the presumption' that the tendencies which operated during tho three years following upon tho census of 1911 have continued up to the present tirric will not be uninteresting. The names given to the groupc-d districts will sufficiently indicate their constitution, and the numbers in brackets represent the number of electorates concerned in cacli case: — ,

The figures include the soldici's ■ in the training camps—who, it is understood, will be allotted to their own constituencies for the purposes of boundary revision—but- take no account ol those who have left the country. The loss of these men lias been equally distributed between the various districts, as the Defence authorities are supplying no information on this subject. The "drift northward" stands out as the most notable.-, feature in the movements of population. Even the - remote North of Auckland, the terra incognita of yesterday,. has expanded more rapidly-than has the most prosperous of the long-settled Canterbury rural districts, while Auckland City lias ' received an access of population more than twice as large as the gains of all the other big centres put together. The East Coast, comprising the Bay of .Plenty and HawUe's Bay, with the towns of Uisborn'e and Napier, liasshared- in the advantages ot' the "drift," and the King Country in the : 1 conjre of the North Island has discovered itself and been discovered. The old Taranaki and Wellington provincial ; districts, containing much of . the best land ill the Dominion, are lagging be- ' hind the localities further north, and ' may be in some way responsible for Wellington's inability, with all its great natural advantages and growing trade, to keep pace even with the southern cities in this respect. The net gain - of population in the North Island, after contributing! at least its fair, share to the Expeditionary Force,s, - is 73,41b, and in the South Island 414!); If won id i seem from such estimates as can he , made that the gain in both, instances has.gone.mainly to the towns, the urban population now exceeding the rural by nearly twenty thousand. The figures make it plain that in . the readjustment of Parliamentary representation the North Island wiil '

take two seats, and, possibly three, from the South Island. If the third seat is saved to tjlie South it will be through the operation of the "country quota," Canterbury" and Otago, it I would appear, still having a more pro-1 nounced disposition towards rural avocations than Auckland and Wellington have. In 1911 the electoral quota, the number of persons, real and imaginary, required to constitute an electorate, i was 15,180. • At the. next election, if I the present estimate is-correct, it will [be in the 1 neighbourhood of 16,250. This ' will give Auckland City an additional seat with the best} part of' another "quota" to spare, and a second seat, 1 if there arc to be only, two, will be carved out of. thoi- districts a,..)ittle further 'to the south.' The lq?,scijji„thc, Sputh ■Island' will--'fall-'upon- Nelson;.-aiKl itheWest Coast, and upon South Otago or Southland, and it would not be surprising if Motueka and Clutlia were the constituencies selected for extinction.