Immigration Disadvantages

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 104, 26 January 1935, Page 9

Immigration Disadvantages

Sir, —The plea for Immigration that appeared in your Monday’s issue says: "How remarkable that Holland. should spend immense Bums on reclaiming the Zuider Zee while in the New World laud goes begging.” Why is Holland spending all that money, if it is not to cope with the most serious of all problems, the danger of over-population? Why is land going begging in our beautiful islands, if it is not that under present restrictions on the marketing of our produce no-one except those in a .very small minority can make a living out of farming? I have had over 50 years’ experience so 1 ought to Know. Why are hundreds of thousands of horse-power of water-power going to waste, if it is not that secondary industries have been strip’ped bare of protection against overseas competitors? Who is going to build factories in order to lose his money? Give us an open market, give us a sound currency, remove all restrictions on the marketing of our produce, encourage instead of discouraging competition, reduce interest, devaluate, not the currency, but the over-capitalisation of the mortgages on the land and on business. When that is done there will be no more need for us than there is for the United States to sing out for immigration. But to bring out, under these present conditions, any considerable body of immigrants would be sheer madness. How long do you think it would take one of these newly imported farmers, with, say, £l9OO Capital, before he would find himself in tbc same unenviable position ns more than half the farmers of New Zealand are? More than 40,000 farmers have lost their capital and their equity, and are only waiting for the dreadful day when the moratorium is lilted, to be turned out, if only a successor can be found to take their place.—l am, etc., HANS C. THOMSEN. , Masterton.