UNDER-POPULATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 1939, Page 8

UNDER-POPULATION

CAUSE OF ECONOMIC TROUBLES LESSON FOR NEW ZEALAND. WHAT IS REAL WEALTH? Viewed in proper perspective, most of the problems confronting New Zealand resolve themselves into one problem, that of population, states an article issued by the Dominion Migration and Settlement Association. We in New Zealand have not fully digested the vital truth that it is people who make the economic machine go. Though engaged in different callings, we are all bent on the same task, that of getting a living. It is on the success of those efforts that the monetary reward of each of us, as well as the wealth of the country, depends. Lately we have heard much about building New Zealand—a process which has been going on for a century. The pioneers found this country well endowed by Nature with a genial climate, fertile soil, adequate timber and minerals and a wealth of water-power. From Britain the settlers had brought money, tools, implements and other manufactured materials, as well as stock. They also brought something else very important to a country, determination and the power to plan. To these means of production they added . labour —the sweat of their brows —to carve civilisation out of a beautiful wilderness. It was then that the New Zealand we know began to be built; the process has been going on ever since and continues. In economic terms New Zealand has been made to produce real wealth by employing human (and machine) labour, human ingenuity and capital goods to exploit our natural resources and we have prospered greatly on the fruits cf.this combination. To go on prospering we must continue to exploit the gifts of nature by this combination of man-power, brains and capital resources, though, in 1939, we must use them differently from the manner of 1839 or even of 1919. MAL-ADJUSTMENT. In countries so organised, periods of mal-adjustment sometimes called slumps, appear when these agents get out oi harmony with one another. We then say that times are bad or that the economic machine is out of gear.' The last expression serves to draw attention to the fact lhat our economic system is very like a machine and functions like one. The breakage or displacement of one cog will put out cf action the whole machine. In a community this disruption often arises because the agents cf production are out of balance; there is too much man-power, or too little capital, or the ability to organise is poor, or the natural resources are scanty. From this over-simplified summary of the way in 1 which our economic system works it will be evident that a wise administration will strive to preserve a balance between the agents which produce a country’s real wealth. If it again be remembered that two of these agents are man-power and capital it can readily be appreciated how a shortage of either (or both) of them ’ can retard a country’s progress. A country’s maximum economic productivity will result from the proper blending of them all, just as a good cook blends the ingredients of a Christmas pudding. If, for example, there was more man-power available than could be blended with the other agents available, then it might be concluded that the country in question has a surplus of mah-power. Unemployment would be .evident and it might be argued that such a country was over-populated. But a country’s ills can arise through there being too few people in it as well as too many. Some countries have too little manpower to combine with the other agents of production, so that their resources go unused.

APPLICATION TO NEW ZEALAND. Let us apply this argument to New Zealand. Can it be said that we have reached the stage where we ate making full use of the gifts of Nature? Can it be said that a million and a half people can provide sufficient manpower which, blended with the other productive agents, will secure to New Zealand her maximum productivity. If not, then many of our problems are those common to an under-populated country. All our hopes for the future are based on the assumption that our man-power will increase and with it our production and national welfare. But the startling truth is that our man-power is within sight of n decline. Hence the agitation in the minds of many thoughtful men and women all over- New Zealand about the urgent necessity for augmentation of our man-power by properly planned migration. They realise that all our efforts to build up an elaborate apparatus of production in this country will be futile if man-power is wanting, not only to produce but to enjoy the fruits of that production. It is men who make the economic machine go. Is New Zealand prepared to face this fundamental oroblem?