Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1943. BUILDING UP POPULATION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 November 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1943. BUILDING UP POPULATION.

r J I HERE can be no doubt that the Dominion Settlement Association, which is now organising a campaign of national scope, is eminently right in its broad contention that this count i.y needs a much larger population. Vvhile lull agreement may not be reached easily on some aspects and details ol policy, thcie can hardly be anything but approval of the essential objects the association has in view in its proposals for an. encouragement of the rearing of larger families, the introduction 01. orphan children from Great Britain and Europe, and a long-range survey by 7 a Royal Commission with a view to a planned and organised scheme for large-scale immigration. It is or should be obvious that any practical attack on our manifestly serious and urgent population problem must fake account of much more than the mere introduction ol immigrants, infant or adult, and certainly must not depend on immigration alone. The .root question to be determined is whether such conditions of community, social and industrial lite can be established in tips country as will tend to encourage and induce, a healthy’ natural increase in population. Unless this can be done, immigration on the greatest scale obviously’ will amount not so much to building up our population, as to substituting one population for'another. An effective treatment of the population problem demands the establishment of moral and material conditions in which the people of the Dominion will tend naturally to increase and multiply- to the extent that is desirable. In. this lightly populated land, the conditions that would conduce to a healthy natural increase might be expected to lend themselves also Io a ready and unhampered inflow of immigrants of a good type. This happy state of affairs existed in New Zealand years ago and there is no obvious reason why it should not be re-established. So far as a future of some years is concerned, the population question evidently cannot be considered or dealt with apart from that of the re-establishment in civil life ol the members of our fighting forces, who have a paramount and indisputable claim to first consideration. The repatriation of our fighting men, if it is to be handled in the best conditions, must in itself entail not only- enterprising measures of industrial development and expansion, but a considerable amount of community reorganisation. The need now is or should be sharply emphasised of making an end of our haphazard drift in urban and industrial development in favour of a more orderly 7 organisation of national life and utilisation of national, resources. The deplorable conditions of housing and living accommodation in Wellington which have been getting a good deal of public attention of late may be mentioned as an example of the kind of thing we should do our utmost to get away 7 from, in the interests both of an effective and satisfactory’ rehabilitation of the members of our fighting forces and, at the broadest view, of the establishment of conditions of community’ life which would at once encourage and justify a progressive increase in population. In regard to both these great questions, a decentralisation of industry, facilitating the establishment of conditions of "life and work which will lend themselves to the rearing of children in the best conditions, is of capital importance. Fundamentally’ all these questions turn on morality 7 and their effective treatment is dependent, on a true spiritual insight and outlook. It should be possible to agree, however, that in dealing with material factors, we can make no mistake in turning away’ from congestion and squalor to a more intelligent, and worthy’ use of the rich resources with which this country 7 is happily 7 endowed.