The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1926. MIGRATION, TARIFFS, LAND, AND CAPITAL

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12616, 29 November 1926, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1926. MIGRATION, TARIFFS, LAND, AND CAPITAL

If New Zealand is to become great and prosperous—it is the aspiration which calls her the Britain of the South—migration and tariff protection must play a large, if not the principal, part in the development. We are absorbing migrants regularly. In the last four years the number, according to Mr Marrmer, reached 75,000. And we have a tariff, for the most part, moderately protective. In the opinion of the majority of our producers the rate of migration is not rapid enough to secure the increase in production which the country’s financial condition imperatively requires. They hold' the opinion—very ancient and very sound—that the three things indispensable for the formation of colonies and their progress towards national greatness are land, labour, and capital. This means, in our present condition, cheaper land, more people on the land, and more money to help them to become independent producers. In the protectionist days, the three indispensable conditions of successful occupation of the country were much discussed. They were then simple, and were solved by the Wakefield method. To-day they are greatly complicated. The progress of our eighty years of civilised life has made them so. The land occupied, much of it m blocks economically too large, is valued too high; secondary industries have attained a great and growing importance; Labour and Capital find their attention painfully and uncertainly divided between them and the land. The economists demand more producers; patriots, while favouring protection for secondary industries, insist on preference for British goods; while all demand an increase of primary production; and, therefore, more population. Many prudent men aver that we cannot take from the Old Country both goods and migrants; there is a general cry that more capital is required for more intense 1 cultivation. The conditions require a simple formula, but in the multitude of projects there is no hope for a simple formula. The difficulties have to be solved, however, if we are to progress towards the destiny of greatness which we all imagine to be ours. They must be solved, each-one according to the degree of its pressure. For each the old motto must serve: Solve it as it comes—“Ambulando.” We want more people, and we have an immigration system of which the measure is the country’s absorbing capacity; and within that measure we can safely march. We protect our secondary industries, and we must see that this protection is sufficient, but not excessive, leaving the preference problem to solve itself according to the respective capacities of Imperial and domestic manufacture and the cost of transport. Increased production we encourage by the diffusion of expert knowledge and by research, and by rceui. tions of various kinds. By these means we hope to meet reduced world prices by reduced costs at our end, and to enable subdivision of large properties to become profitable. And we increase transport facilities by a liberal expenditure, and control them by regulation. At the moment, the cry for more protection is insistent, and as the day appointed for revision of the tariff 'approaches, the manufacturers declare it is their opportunity. Far be it from us to make objection. But one condition must be observed. Tariff revision must be considered with an eye to all the factors of national progress which we have sketchily outlined above.