IMMIGRATION AND LABOUR

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8355, 15 February 1913, Page 4

IMMIGRATION AND LABOUR

It is sincerely to be hoped that the members of the New Zealand Government read tho newspapers. Wo are, however,, sometimes inclined to entertain doubts on this point. Their proposal, for example, to import every year 25,000 “farmers and farm workers’,’ —and others-—is so obviously out of joint with the country’s requirements as to suggest lack of information that is readily available. As to farmers, there is the glaring fact of land monopoly staring everybody in the fa'ce. There is a farm famine in New Zealand. The Government cannot satisfy one-tenth of the demand for laud by people already here who desire to take root on the soil. Yet, on the one hand, Reform (I) buttresses the grossest monopolisation, selects the greatest landowners for its most special favours, and takes its policy from their newspaper; while on the other hand it proposes the wholesale immigration of people who shall first compete with the existing army of land-hungry men and women, and then, failing the supply of land, shall enter into and over-stock the labour market) This is one of the strong (planks in the policy of ISelf-ktyled “Reform.” We invito the public to have a good look at it. Our reference to the newspapers is prompted by the cablegrams we publish this morning from Australia, tolling of thousands of men out of employment in Victoria, in New South Wales, in Queensland, in West Australia. It Bo happens that the Commonwealth has in the last couple of years been indulging in a sort of revelry of immigration, to the applause of unthinking politicians and many of the big metropolitan newspapers. But Australia has not taken anything like adequate steps to find for'the incoming multitude reasonable access to tho land. Her cities have made remarkable growth, while her country is pathetically empty. In the year 1911 alone the balance of arrivals in Australia over departures amounted to about 80,000,_ or nearly double the whole of her gain by immigration in the previous twenty years. V sudden influx of this magnitude, unless accompanied by corresponding’)* '’xtensive measures to find occupation for the people on the land, must inevitably glut the employment Market --ooner or later. The news we have from the Commonwealth to-day is -norely a demonstration of the relation of cause to effect. The Governments' ■of Australia have been sowing the wind. Most unfairly, the people are reaping the whirlwind. That is why we impress upon our own Ministers that it pays to read the papers.