MIGRATION & DEBT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 September 1938, Page 3

MIGRATION & DEBT

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Re immigration. There was a time, long, long ago when agriculture could* employ nearly the whole population'. Machinery has altered, all that, in 1800 about 40 per cent of England’s population found work on the farms. In 1914 only 13 per cent found work on the land. The rest found their work in manufacturing, trade, transport and other employments. All over the civilised world the number of hands on the farms is a mere fraction of what it used to be before the advent of machinery. In New Zealand the 1932 “Year Book” tells us only 140,000 are working on the farms. That is to say about 10 or 12 per cent of the whole population. Where then are the hundreds of thousands of immigrants, that they propose to bring out, going to find work on the land? But, say the people at home, look at the enormbus stretches of waste land? Yes, and look at the enormous indebtedness these same broad acres have to carry. Is it not an absolute certainty that any ordinary farmer, who takes up these lands and takes over the debit will find it impossible to make a living? As we saw, in the case of England, and in other countries too, the men who were driven off the land by the machinery are finding work in the factories making the machines. How many are finding work 'that way in New Zealand? Only about 60,000 or roughly four per cent, and those very people who are asking us to take immigrants and find work for them, have told us over and over again that we must never dream of expanding our tiny little outfit of secondary industries. How tljen are we to find work for the scores of thousands of immigrants that they propose to dump on us and the other Dohiinions? The land can not take them. If we had the factories required to make the goods we now import, we could find work for all the unemployed we have got and even take some skilled labour from home. But as it is, would it not be absolute madness to import tens of thousands of men for whom we have no work except by dismissing the old hands and putting new arrivals in their places? Have they forgotten the last time we had immigration? Between 1926 and 1930 we imported 49,000 immigrants. In 1920 we had 10,000 unemployed and in 1930 we had 51,000 out of work. And ever since then, the unemployment vote has been one of the biggest on the list. Do we need a repetition of the same lesson? But there is another and far more serious thing to consider, and that is the awful danger of overpopulation. For instance, between 1780 and 1875 the population of Ireland increased from about three millions to nearly nine millions. In 1844 a Royal Commission reported that the population was trenching so much on the means of subsistence, that the only food of the peasantry was the potato, the only drink was water. Next year the potato crop failed. Over a quarter of a million died of hunger. And in a few years famine and immigration had reduced the population to about onehalf. Only a few years before this Ireland was reported to be growing nearly twice as much food as she was consuming. Where had it gone? It had been exported to pay for imports and settle debts. That is the danger that threatens the whole civilised world today. More and more food has got to be exported to satisfy the ever-rising demands of the world’s creditor. New Zealand, like Ireland, is growing not twice, but three times as much food as she consumes, but 70 per cent has to be exported to pay for debts and imports and we live on the remaining 30 per cent. But our debts are growing. More and more has to be exported to meet the increasing demands, and if now hundreds of thousands of immigrants are introduced, for whom we have no work, what can the ultimate result be but the awful, fate of Ireland over again?—Your, etc.. HANS C. THOMSEN. Masterton, September 4.