Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1908. ROOM FOR MORE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43324, 12 May 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1908. ROOM FOR MORE.

This above all—to thine own self be true, ind it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

Wb are disposed to be somewhat amused at the heading employed in a Herald paragraph the other day, relating to the population of the Dominion. “ Nearing the Million ” was the term employed, as though that were something to be proud of, in fact quite an achievement. When we reflect, that is not a sixth of the population of London, and it is wholly inconsiderable in proportion to the population of the United Kingdom, we can only feel that it is very far from creditable. It reminds us of an interview we had with Mr / Frank Bullen when he was visiting this country, he said, “The want of population is shocking. It would be far better if less money had been spent on experir. 1 ’ ital legislation and more on practicallids* I notice the same want in Australia, about half the entire population and practically all the treasures of New South Wales are concentrated in Sydney, what a prize for an invader!” ' It is not only of invaders in that sense that we are thinking, but of industrial invaders, who tend to bring down the standard of living. We are not of those retrogressionists who hold that the way to cope successfully with foreign competitiou is to put a premium on capital and take a discount off labour. Men are worth more than money, any day, and the\ working man in this country, with state education for his children and the means of living in comfort, with leisure to employ his brains, is product for which to “ Thank Heaven fasting,” albeit he has not yet fully risen to his intellectual privileges. At the same time we would like to point out that one way to cope with alien invasion is to people these islands as they ought to be peopled with our own kin. We are not overlooking the fact of the 12906 arrivals recorded for the current year. But place against that, the 9358 departures, and it will be seen that we are not holding our ground as we should be. Surely the justest and most effectual way to stem alien population, with its low standards of existence, is to people the Dominion, and people her sufficiently with our own stock. Mr Johan Hansson, the Swedish journalist, says that his investigations went to show that the more destitute portion of the London/ population consisted of aliens, in fact it was to the presence of the alien that he attributed the destitution of the British poor themselves. Therefore, while we do not advocate any unrighteous restriction measures with regard to aliens, we do most strenuous iy advocate a more' assiduous promotion of immigration to these “Happy Isles,” of that “ aristocracy ” among our working classes in the old land of which only lately we have been reminded. For we venture to opine that there is plenty of room for our kin from the Antipodes, and that when Inspector Gillies in an interview in Christchurch recently, said that the rapidly developing North Island alone would easily carry the Dominion’s entire population, he was stating the c&F.fe very mildly.