EMPTY SPACES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 16, 12 October 1937, Page 5

EMPTY SPACES

Empire Migration CONFERENCE OPENS "N.Z.'s Crying Necd i« Britisb Capital and Brains"

POPULATION & DEFENCE

(Britiah OfficiaT Wireless.) (Received 12, 12.30 p.m.)' RUGBY, Oct. 11. A three-days conference on Empire migration and developmeat has opened in London. More than 400 persons, including representatives of Dominion central Governments, State or provincial Governments, heads of municipalities In the United Kingdom^nd representatives of migration organisations, are taking patt. The conference ia not directep

towarda securing a return to thi urrestricted migration of the paet to the Dominions, but at the organised migration of selected families to be established not only on the land but also in all f orms of industry and development. "Alicns who have no link with. or loyalty to the Empir.e and whose standards of living are low are peopling the empty spaces of the Dominions," said Sir George Broadbridge, Lord Mayor of London, in opening the caaferenee. He added that widespread unemployment and the absence of opportunitioa for families in Britain demanded a solution and that the Dominions' limitleas undeveloped resources eOuld supply work and livelihood for vast numbera. Lord Horne said that the post-war collapse of migration was a potentiai danger to the Empire. It was a fallacy to believe that migrants would deprive Dominion residents of work. It w»s aleo wrong to concentrate in plaeing immigrants on the land. The Dominions should extend their secondary - beside? their primary activities. Lord Horne advocated the ' formation of an Imperial development board representative of engineering, industry ^ commerce and reseaTch workers, with a permanent secretariat. Lord Bledisloe, on behalf of 20 New Zealand organisations, said that New Zealand was capable of absorbing ten to twenty million people in the next half-century ahd fifty thousand in the following five years. New Zealand 'e crying need was British capital and brains. If the capital wete notforthcomingprivately it should be furnished by the British Government by loans on low interem to companies and corporations. Secondary industry must inevitably expand in New Zealand. If that «xpansion were not backed by 'British capital, foreigners would step in. No country was more vulnerable than New Zealand. Man-power waa badly needed for defence, but, Lojd Bledisloe warned the conference, there must be an end to the haphazarC influx of emigrants.