The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1909. LOCKING THE DOOR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2561, 23 July 1909, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1909. LOCKING THE DOOR.

“The Government has decided to stop all assisted immigration.” This notification which has just been made by the Acting-Premier' represents ' a 'shocking climb-down on the part of the. Government, and at the saAne time deals a severe blow to the reputation of this country. For more years than we like to. remember it has been an integral part of our legislative policy to encourage immigration in. all possible ways. Thomas Bracken -s .phrase was calmly appropriated by the late Mr. Seddon, who never tired of dilating on the wonderful charm and the unexampled prosperity of “God’s Own Country.” All we .wanted was more population to continue its development. In furtherance Of which idea we turned our High Commissioner’s Office into ail. immigration bureau, sent through the English

provinces lecturers who, with the assistance of highly colored lantern slides, depicted the glories of the "working man’s paradise.” We followed tho same ideal in another direction by the establishment and maintenance of the very elaborate and expensive Tourist Department, for although this branch of the public service existed ostensibly to attract tourists on holiday visits to New Zealand, it likewise specialised on the immigration business. Lacking neither nervo nor effrontery in the heyday of our boasted prosperity, we even, established bureaux in Melbourne and Sydney,' with the view to robbing our neighbors in the Commonwealth of some of the population which they needed even more than we. And now how are the mighty fallen! Our Government has had to officially admit that iwhat unkind critics have been saying for some time is.correct, and that New Zealand is a good place to stay away from. We cannot take any jnore immigrants simply because we cannot find -work for the few thousand that have come. The situation is both deplorable and humiliating. Here we have a country larger than that which accommodated nearly fifty millions of Britishers, yet with only one million we are unable to cope with the needs of a few thousand immigrants, and becauso we cannot afford to keep the men idle and we dare not starve them wo are compelled to lock the Dominion door and affix the placard, "Immigrants not wanted.” And yet we did need population and still do; in fact, the safety of the country makes it essential that in some way we should have the Dominion more thickly populated. But the locking of the door will have put back this feature of our development to a tremendous extent. Canada, Australia, the Argentine—our greatest rivals in bidding for the surplus population' of the Old World —will reap the advantage of our present discomfiture, for the stream of immigrants which had at last after years of advertising turned markedly towards this country, will inevitably be diverted elsewhere. AH the work upon which the Government lias in the past spent thousands upon thousands of pounds will be practically wasted, and when the door is again opened it will probably cost an infinite amount of money to again divert any substantial portion of the immigrant stream through the channel that is now temporarily closed. "It was unsafe in 1909, how can I be assured it is better in 1910 or 1911” will be the very natural attitude of the intending immigrant. The fact of the matter is we have made a lamentable mistake, or rather the so-called Liberal Government has made it for xis. We have invited the people of the Old World to make their homos with us, and yet have made no proper provision for their reception. Our Governmental attempts at land settlement have proved a delusion and a snare, for after all these years the bulk of the land is still withheld from settlement, and it is harder now than ever it was for a legitimate settler to get on the land. What with borrowed money and abnormally high prices for products we were, able to make a ■reasonably good showing, so long as all conditions remained favorable, but so soon as the formerly smooth. waters of commerce become the least bit ruffled we are in trouble. The position cannot and will not be remedied until we have a Government in power which will make all the lands of the Dominion available for settlement. In this Island alone there are fully 7,000,000 acres of native lands which are awaiting the energy of good farmers to make them productive, but no practical steps have been taken to bring them as. a whole into profitable use. However, the door is closed now, and the best thing to do is to keep it closed until some Government has devised: a means to open up 1 the lands of the Dominion for general settlement, and thus enable a larger population to be profitably occupied. If our legislators in dealing with our land problem had half the courage and enterprise of those Canadian statesmen who opened up the great North-west a few years hack, and thus laid the foundation of a mighty nation, we should not need to advertise for immigrants nor to lock the doer when they commenced to come in at the rate of a few shiploads per annum. (