OUR NEED OF POPULATION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 February 1939, Page 6

OUR NEED OF POPULATION.

'fills country had a Department of Immigration until, on account of declining and dwindling immigratibn, -the Department found its occupation gone. Now the Speaker ol the House of Representatives (the lion W. E. Barnard), who is a tirelessly enthusiastic advocate of population building, is urging that a Department of Immigration should be sot up again. Reluctant as many people are to see the machinery of officialdom enlarged and extended, it may be agreed that some means of getting Io grips with the problem’of immigration in its practical aspects is needed badly. We arc virtually all agreed that the Dominion must increase its population if il is to know fullire security and achieve a really satisfactory continuing development. It. is agreed also that immigration must not be allowed to aceenuate our slill unsolved problem of unemployment. Industrial development, using that term in its broadest meaning, thus presents itself as the key Io the solution of our population problem.

With the position to that extent defined, an earnest and intensive study of possibilities of absorbing additional .population by an extension and development of industry appears to lie demanded. Something is being done in Now Zealand to promote and em-ourage an expansion of industry, but there are aspects of the related problems of industrial development and immigration which apparently lire being almost entirely neglected.

Remil cablegrams from Britain, for example, have reported that immigrants Irom Continental Europe have not only established themselves in self-supporting industry in the United Kingdom, but in doing so have provided employment lor thousands of British citizens previously unemployed. Similar reports have been transmitted from Australia, and with them the news that it is hoped to proceed further on these lines of development. If anything whatever of the same kind is being done in New Zealand, remarkably little has been heard on th<‘ subject.

Il can hardlv bo doubled, however, that immigrants might be brought in who would establish new industries here and also provide some additional employment for New Zealanders. How much departmental machinery must be set up in order that the position may be examined with a view to action may be open to question. There is no doubt, however, that il we select the right immigrants they will establish additional industries to IIK-ir own benefit and 1 hat of the people, already here. Common sense and"a reasonable regard for the interests of the Dominion obviously demand that a beginning at least should be made without delay in a policy of immigration on these lines.