Page 4 Advertisements Column 4

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 128, 21 November 1911, Page 4

FLEEIXG THE COUNTRY! Any stick is as useful as another in boating the Government dog with, and a stick that is being used promiscuously just now in Taranaki by certain "Reform" candidates is that- population is leaving the country as a result of the alleged maladministration, etc., of the Party in power. That electors can be and are misled by these allegations is proved by a correspondent who in our columns lust week took up the refrain, no doubt thinking that the country was losing the (lower of its population. When these statements are examined, however, they, like so many of the other rash and pessimistic assertions put forward as facts, are found to be hopelessly incorrect. Xew Zealand is handicapped geographically more than any other country in the world so far as attracting immigrants is concerned. It is out of the beaten track, away on the outskirts of the southern hemisphere, and the cost and diflicnlty of reaching here, and the time involved, are factors which must seriously operate against ns in the attraction of immigration. Notwithstanding these manifest disadvantages, however. Xew Zealand has one of the h ighest centesimal increases ill population in the world. Take Australia, where the lugubrious ones tell us most, of our people arc Hocking, the increase there was only half Xew Zealand's. We were, and still are. told that Canada beats us easily in the matter of growth of population. Tt certainly should do so, because she is close to tlie great centres of population; she has not the exclusive immigration laws that obtain in this country: she has an elaborate system of advertising, and oilers free farms to incoming settlers. Yet in spite of all this we find from the recent census of Canada that her growth of population during the past decade is less than two per cent, greater than that of Xew Zealand. The centesimal in-