ATTRACTING POPULATION.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2465, 28 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

ATTRACTING POPULATION.

TllOL'Oli California has, during the past year or two, attracted considerable population, wheicat we are all rejoicing and anticipating and double discounting future values, yet the total results so far accomplished, gratifying as they are, ire not so very much to boast about after all. With our unsurpassed climate, fertile soil, varied products and teeming wealth of every kind, we have not been nearly as successful in attracting population as many less favoured States and countries have been. Blizzards, cyclones and other evils notwithstanding, both Dakota and Minnesota have, during the past ten years, drawn three or four times as much population as California. The same thing is true of Kansas, lowa and Nebraska. Even away down at the Antipodes, where the great distance from the centres of population seemed at first to render immigration impossible, they have been attracting the very best class of settlers at a rate to which California is a stranger. The comparatively small colony of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, started out in its career of population getting in 1851, when gold was discovered. California, from a similar cause, began two years earlier. Her population to-day is estimated at about 1,000,000. The Australian colony named has a known population of 1,200,000. San Francisco numbers 300,000 people, whilst Melbourne has distanced her in the race by about 50,000 people. For nineteen years past we have had a railroad across our entire continent. Some Hi,ooo miles of ocean hud to'be crossed in order to reach Australia. Why, with advantages unequalled the wide world over, have we been much slower in drawing population than very inferior States ? The full reasons are of a character that one must go from home to fully find out. The Californian who travels is told something about them, when he ia inclined to listen, which is not often. He is told that California in a laud of Vigilance Committees, of lawlessness, of disregard of human life, of stage robberies, and of other evils many and great. Ho is informed that the law does not here right every wrong , ; that our city government is in the hands of the criminal classes ; that bad morals crown society, whilst ill gotten gains are its basis. It is not to the purpose that all of this is not true, and that that which is true is in a fair wny of i'nprovprnent. It is enough that our reputatioa in thesu particulars are among the reasons why California does not prove as attractive as she ought to emigrating people. Tint California will como out all right in the end is beyond a peradventure. Meantime it would wonderfully accelerate the speed of things if we could induce others to think as well of us as we think of ourselves.—'Frisco News Letter.