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Hokitika Guardian, 30 November 1928, Page 4

In his presidential address to the Employers’ Association at Auckland, Air Albert Spencer characterised the tendency of the population to drift from i.ie country to the towns as not only regrettable, but also constant. The movement, notes a contemporary, lias been somewhat clearly marked, as the statistics show, during the past twent;. or twenty-live years. In the decade between the census years 1 DIG and 1920 the proportion of the total population that was concentrated in the four principal centres rose from 8(i.04 per cent, to 87.71 per emit, and the percentage in the ioLnl urban area rose from 00.25 |o 07.99. In round figures, of every hundred persons in New Zen and 08 live in the towns and 42 in the country, and there is nothing to indicate there is any immediate prospect that this gradual increase in the proportion ol town dwellers will le arrested. The fact that the experience of Now Zealand in this respect is by no means uncommon is not particularly consoling. The problem has various aspects. Mr Spencer touches on the educational aspect of it, and. not without some show of reason, blames educational authorities for encouraging the belief that secondary school and university education is essential for success in life, with the result that a. demand lias lieen created for the specialised training of vowng people to (it them to enter trades and professions, that are already overcrowded. ('Jeiierally speaking, there is no doubt some weight in this argument The education system is more or less in a state of flux at the present Lime, and it is possible that in many eases the effect upon the young people in the rural districts is more unsettling than otherwise. Though training for rural pursuits is receiving increased attention, it does not necessarily follow that the result will be to encourage an appreciably larger number of country hoys to look upon the -oil as the natural source of their livelihood. Undoubtedly the drift to the towns is to a large extent explained by the attractions which town life offers, it has been accentuated, too, of late years, by tli difficulty which country employers have encountered in paying wages which, though not prescribed by the Arbitration Court, arc regulated to some extent by the scale of wages specified in awards of the court. The whole question is one of very considerable complexity, and the remedy for the situation which Afr Spencer deplores, is not readily discoverable. It is possible to agree that the line of educational advance in the past has not been altogether helpful.