Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1938. OUR NEED OF POPULATION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 June 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1938. OUR NEED OF POPULATION.

jyjOST of those who have given serious thought to the question are agreed, that this country greatly needs a much more numerous population. A considerable proportion even of those who have insisted most strongly upon existing obstacles to immigration have been able to agree that these obstacles are temporary in character and ought to be removed as expeditiously as possible. With the proviso always that the best approach to a larger population would be made by way of a more flourishing birth-rate, the contention that attention and effort should be concentrated upon practical methods of reopening the doors to immigration is one that should appeal to every intelligent New Zealander.

The possibility uppermost today is not that of any unwise plunge into some policy of immigration, but rather that neglect and indifference to the whole problem of building up our population may be neglected to a point of danger. That being so,' a report on immigration by a committee of the Five Million Club, some extracts from which were published yesterday, may at a broad view be-welcomed and commended unreservedly.

In what may be termed their flying survey of the position that exists today the compilers of the report have recognised freely that the social, economic and other conditions ruling in the Dominion have undergone great changes during the last decade or two and that the problem of building up the population must be approached from a correspondingly new standpoint. As the report emphasises, there is room and need for much methodical study oi the problems involved and it is fairly urged that the welfare of the Dominion and its people demands that these studies should be set on foot. It may be suggested here that the problem of adding to the existing population has nowhere, greater claims to practical attention than in comparatively thinly populated rural areas and provincial centres like those of the Wairarapa.

The committee of the Five Million Club is of opinion that openings exist in the Dominion today for the introduction as immigrants of limited numbers of domestic servants, farm workers, skilled tradesmen of some kinds, and retired officers, professional men, civil servants and others who are looking for a country in which they might spend their years of retirement pleasantly and in which their children might grow up under healthy conditions in a congenial environment. Under due safeguards, all of these categories no doubt might advantageously be drawn upon, the last-mentioned category perhaps most freely of all.

It may be hoped, however, that in its full magnitude and scope, the population problem of this country will be solved eventually by the establishment of economic and social conditions which will directly encourage an expansion of population alike by natural increase and by immigration.

To a considerable extent the growth and expansion of industries in this country is hampered, or arrested, by the smallness of our population. Any change to the new conditions that certainly are desirable evidently must be more or less gradual. We cannot as a first step introduce the much greater population that would give internal industries the larger home market they need. The only remaining possibility apparently is to build up industries and population step by step and side by side.

In passages of its report which bear witness to a really thoughtful survey of the position, the committee of the Five Million Club points to the necessity of building up urban as well as rural population. There is no doubt that the expansion of some of our leading branches of primary industry, looking to export markets, is today a doubtful proposition, or something worse than that. This country cannot build up the larger population it undoubtedly needs without progressively expanding its secondary industries. On the other hand much rural development is possible which would make no additional demand, or only a limited further demand, on export markets. Visible opportunities for expansion on these lines are far from having been turned fully to account and the exploration of new branches of production from the land recommended by the Five Million Club committee certainly is well worth undertaking. It may be repeated that the Wairarapa is pre-eminently an area in which methodical and sustained effort should be brought to bear upon lhe solution of the closely and inseparably related problems of industrial expansion and the building up of a greater population.