The Daily News. THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1918. AN IMPORTANT QUESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1918, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1918. AN IMPORTANT QUESTION.

An interesting letter has been written by Mr. T. G. Sedgwick to the Prime Minister of New Zealand on the subject of Imperial migration and the employment of wounded and discharged soldiers. Mr Sedgwick had for many years prior to the war interested himself in the question of peopling the colonies, and was responsible for the sending out of several batches of immigrants, mostly young people. His efforts were crowned with success, and he was busy on a more comprehensive scheme when war broke out. In his letter to Mr. Massey, Mr. Sedgwick gives some facts that are surprising. For instance, lie declares that after the war Britain will have a bigger population, both working and actual, than if there had been no war. He calculates Britain to have lost 250,000 men by death, which may increase to 500,000 before peace is declared. The loss has been made good several times over in the number of population, and in the supply and demand on the labor market. As against the losses/ in the war hav« % be set half a million persona saved to the country, at ,he. expense of the colonies, by the stoppage of Imperial migration since the outbreak of war, and 380,000 Belgians settled in England, together with 20,000 Chinese, who are taking the positions of those fighting. Then there are half a million female workers, now mostly in munition factories and other masculine occupations, giving altogether with 300,000 less peraons in receipt of Poor law relief, a total of some 1,705,000. A further 500,000 men's work is represented by the £100,000,000 of new munition machinery applicable to other forms of industry, which alone, Mr. Sedgwick says, would maintain Britain's manufacturing and producing outputs at their former levelß, even if half a million men were sacrificed. Mr. Sedgwick goes on to say:

''The post-war migration promises to !be on a scale of unprecedented magnitude, but its direction into Imperial channels requires preparation, watching and care, or it willbe diverted to emigration to the llMtcd States or elsewhere j under foreign flags, to \he loss to the Empire in food suplies, defence, and wealth, all of which depend on effective man-power. The year after 250,000 men returned from the South African War, 217,000 persons left Great Britain for the United States, where their consumption of British manufactures was about os per head per annum as against £l2 per head of population in New Zealand. The wealth they and their posterity have produced and will produce is lost to the Empire, but won by our great Ally, America. If New Zealand is now worth £1,000,000,000 capital value, imagination boggles either at what she should be worth with more population a century hence, or at what she might have been worth 'by now had more migration been directed to her shores. The conquest of New Zealand alone would have almost indemnified the Germans financially for their war costs, and as the country develops it will be a richer prize to other nations who are 'becoming overcrowded at home. When we consider how Germany's natural increase before the war was'at the rate of 90,000 a year, whilst her admitted losses in men have not been more than one-third as high, despite a reduced birthrate, her numerical population must have risen since 1014, and in another fifteen or twenty years she will have more than made good her total losses in man-power during the war. On the matter of female migration Mr. Sedgwick states: —Orphanages are needed in New Zealand for the older children of school age of war widows who decide to migrate, and at the same time there is a great need throughout the Dominion for an extended system of immigration of girls to help the wives of the artisans, hut this needs the erection of machinery, for- selecting the mistresses, supervision, and, if possible, apprenticeship with compulsory banking of wages. This would be further improved if there were several training homes for immigrant girls, where they could recover from the voyage, learn a little of the duties required

of them, and 'which they could get to regard as their "home" in cases of nines.*, change or holidays. The selection of British hrides by New Zealand soldiers is, however, more than neutralised at Home hy the deaths of Hie real and potential husbands at the front, so our surplus females at home after the war ■will number U million?, which will be almost exactly the number or our widows. Even if 10.000 New Zealanders arc 'killed in the war, which God forbid! i the excess of males over females in New Zealand will still be n.",731, less any re|duclion made by the New Zealand troops taking hrides from the beautiful females of this and Allied countries, all of which had before the war excess femininity of population ranging from fi.OS, per cent. in Portugal to 0.-1!) per cent, in Russian Poland, against a New Zealand excess masculinity of iI.S per cent, in 11(1-1. The British .Government have promised female, workers on the land at Home special facilities to migrate after the war, and this offer undoubtedly decided many to volunteer for rural work. These also, if they stay here, are a serious menace to the employment of the wounded men, but if they migrate they become potential wives of New Zealanders who otherwise are condemned to celibacy. The net loss to the Empire of thus keeping over three per cent, of its population sexually separated spells a loss which in a century would exceed our expenses in this war." After dealing with views on the matters of junior migration, Mr .Sedgwick goes on to state:—The experiences of the New Zealand Government, and imitated by others, has been that of the 5000 lads migrated to rural work from Great Britain (mostly town lads) during the five years before the war, practically no failures have occurred when they stayed on the land, although many cases of distress have arisen when the lads drifted up to the town before they had become acclimatised and accustomed to rural surroundings. The employment of the partially disabled or wounded soldiers at Home depends on a proportion of the boys now in blind-ally occupations, such as munition factory hand;;, messengers, packers, lift-boys, being withdrawn into more productive channels of omployment, and they will not take jobs which should be reserved for ex-soldiers, whether Imperial or British. The boys fulfil one class of work and the men another, and both are complementary and necessary to each other. One munition factory will discharge probably about SOOO boys after the war, and there are ■2500 'other controlled establishments. We have WOO telegraph boys, and before the war wo had 50,000 golf caddies. What are our wounded men to do in face of such competition—augmented by female labor—if the Britain of the south does not come to the aid of the Britain of the north (and at the same time help herself to her one need, population) and reduce the pressure on.our labor market by migration? Every war begins where the last war left off as far as the application of science is concerned. If Australia is ever attacked, the experience of the present war will be applied to her conquest High explosives, hydroplanes, aeroplanes, submarines, poison gas, and any fresh horror which man's ingenuity can invent in the interim will bo got ready, just as gun-powder and round shot were prepared in days gone by. The horrihleness of war will make for its curtailment, and if New Zealand and Australia be Mother Country could not send of?"contingents to arrive before the war would have to be over. Moreover, the people at Home would not bo prepared to fight to prevent foreigners settling in unoccupied portions of the Empire, especially when the same people are admitted freely to the already overcrowded Old Country, particularly as sha has the Opportunity now to get the possible defenders who will produce th? wealth necessary to pay for her defence?. The boys have already proved themselves good soldiers, keen in the defence of the country of their adoption, and if all the losses in the Dominion's armies are made good by drafts from Lord Kitchener's armies, it will form, says Mr. Sedgwick, the best and most splendid memorial to him and to the, heroic df.ad of the Dominion, and in a measure hot!, avenge their deaths and advance the. defence of New Zealand, for which they wrought so much and for which they died. Moreover, New Zealand's dne million and Australia's five million people could not afford to pay for a war, as British troops would need LNW Zealand rate's of pay. A British "Tommy" now costs £2OO a year. To ■ migrate a trained soldier-settler would ! not cost £2O, and his labors would enrich the Commonwealth by £IOO a year. The future of New Zealand lies, therefore, in migration or conquest. If New . Zealand desires population, she should , prepare now to act for herself. Migration, being an economic factor, it finds 1 its own level, and as soon as wages rise and pauperism, unemployment and overcrowding are reduced at Home thereby : the tendency to migrate will decline. Now is the time, as a year hence it will be too late.