The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 1928. EMPIRE POPULATION.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 August 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 1928. EMPIRE POPULATION.

In January last the British Government set up an organisation known as the Industrial Transference Board to provide or suggest remedies for the depression in some of Britain’s staple industries. The special question that the Board was to investigate was the possibility of relieving the existing industrial pressure in the areas of depressed trade. The Board has issued it report, and it can hardly he regarded, as a contemporary remarks, as a consoling or encouraging document The report points out that there are 200,000 miners out of work at home, and in the other “heavy” industries—shipbuilding and iron and steel—there arc at least 100,000 idle. These are the industries by which, in the main, Britain must stand or fall, but the best that the report can offer as a remedy for this deplorable state of affairs is “the removal, of men from the depressed industries to areas where the prospects are more favourable.” It seems to us that this proposal largely leaves out of account the ignorance, the poverty and the conservatism of such workers, their strong attachment to local and traditional conditions, and their inability to turn their highlyspecialised skill to any other purpose elsewhere. As an alternative method of relief the report lays a great deal of stress on emigration. But here, again, we cannot say that we are impressed by its grasp of the situation. It is an unfortunate fact that, as the members of the Transference Board put it, the absorption of Britain’s surplus population by the oversea Dominions has been in recent years “disappointingly slow.” From the British standpoint there is something radically wrong with a system which allowed Canada last year to receive 82,000 Continental immigrants and increased Australia’s non-British population by 22,000. And it is equally certain that the Dominions are nowhere near “the point of saturation”., so far as area and industrial potentialities are concerned. But the report appears to assume that a continuous flow of British emigrants to the Dominions can be established and maintained merely by simplifying regulations and paying passage money; and here we must venture to dissent. Statistics show a heavy fall in the number of “assisted” immigrants received by Australia and New Zealand. which strikes the Board as deplorable, and the report suggests that high fares, heavy contingent expenses and complicated procedure are the chief reasons for this diminution. But the situation regarding employment in the overseas parts of the Empire is no less acute, and the industrial troubles in New Zealand, through lack of employment for the army of unemployed, caused the Government to stop immigration. A large influx of British labour at this juncture would of course he a disaster. Unemployment, unfortunately is rife, and in the South Island at least soup kitchens have had to be established. This is history repeating

itself. Away back in the late eighties of last century soup kitchens had to be established in the centres of population, distress being so rife. It is sad to think they are again necessary, for here we have a depressing commentary on the years of progress which marked the interval. But the situation emphasises what a very present trouble unemployment is, and lmw difficult it would be for New Zealand to absorb fresh population seeking occupations. It is best, of course, that the Empire population should remain within within the Empire, that being most beneficial and profitable, but the obstacles at this juncture are so great that such a transference of population cannot be effected with any national advantage—rather the reverse.