Passage Rates.

That is one thing. Now take some of the practical obstacles to that, to a flow which we want to accelerate in any case, but which is at the present time being retarded. The greatest obstacle at the moment is the fact that you have widespread poverty in this country, consequent upon the war, and very high passage rates, so that hundreds of thousands of admirable settlers cannot get across and to a large extent are deteriorating for want of opportunity either of work here or of the kind of employment to which they could adapt themselves in the Dominions, in the main agricultural employment. Anything that gives direct assistance to bridge that gap, to get over that obstacle, is a very real help. As the Conference knows, immediately after the war, the British Government gave free passages to ex-service men and their families. Now, they were carefully selected, and that is essential, but out of nearly ninety thousand who have gone the percentage of failures has been infinitesimal. But for those free passages they would not have gone. I have no doubt whatever that that expenditure by the British Government has been amply repaid. It has meant an addition to the resources of the Dominions, and has repaid us here both by the increase in our markets and by the diminution of what we should otherwise be spending on unemployment expenditure. So I do want to lay great stress, in this business of Empire settlement, on the form of assistance that in a sense covers every other form of assistance, to get over the cost of passages, because with a reasonable selection, if you can get the people across, they do find their openings and they do create the new wealth which enables others to follow on after them.

Migration by Families.

More particularly I should like to lay stress on what I referred to just now in connection with the ex-service free passages, the desirability of making it possible for the man who has a family to go across, because, from the point of view of future citizenship, that is the most valuable element we can send to you. It is true from the point of view of the individual employer the single man is preferred, but from the point of view of development the man who goes with a family of growing children, the citizens, the creators of the wealth. of the future, is the most welcome settler. I should like to draw attention to this fact, that New Zealand, in this respect, has agreed with us on assisted passage schemes very substantially ahead of any other Dominion in the very liberal assistance they give to the man with a family, that is to say, that children up to a certain age go entirely free and the older sons and daughters at a very reduced rate. I think to-day a man with quite a large family can get to New Zealand on practically no more than it takes a man and his wife alone to go to Australia. I should like to press very strongly the importance of that. There are many other points which I do not think at this moment I need dwell on, the importance of extending in every way the principle, which I think Australia first introduced, of nomination; both individual nomination and nomination by

responsible bodies, churches, masonic lodges, rotary clubs, and so on. That method is especially helpful in the case of migration of

women.

Importance of Housing.

Then there is another point which is of the greatest importance and that is the question of housing. It is undoubtedly true that all over the Empire housing accommodation for the farm labourer is often very inadequate. Now unless you can provide housing accommodation which is not only tolerable for the man but tolerable also for his wife, that man will not stay on the land for long, however good his intentions to begin with. If his wife finds conditions on the land intolerable she will worry him until he goes to the city. I always feel in this question of settlement we have paid far too little attention to the dominant factor which is the woman. It is her interests, her well being, the possibilities of her living decently and bringing up her children which will in the long run decide where the man is going.

Preference for British Settlers.

There is always a danger under our Parliamentary system in every part of the Empire that when some unsuitable person gets in or something happens that is not altogether desirable, it is brought to the notice of Parliament and some general restrictive regulation is then passed which keeps out 100 desirable immigrants for one bad one. I do hope that at any rate as regards British subjects there should be substantial Preference as far as possible in making those regulations. Canada has done a good deal within the last few months to give that sort of Preference in its restrictive regulations; for instance, as to the sum of money required.on entry for British subjects as against aliens, and I do hope that we may be able to explore the possibility of going further in that respect.

Need for Proper Selection.

Then, of course, there is another side of the question, coupled with the removal of obstacles, and that is the great importance of proper selection and proper direction when the settler gets out there, and the proper protection and help to him when he is arriving. There is no doubt that bad selection has a very unfortunate reaction on the whole movement afterwards. A few people go out who are thoroughly unsuitable. They are failures, they discredit the English migrant in the Dominion they go to, and the letters they send home, the bad remarks they make when they come home, discredit the Dominions over here. It is very important to get good selection. We have made great progress, between ourselves and the Dominion Authorities, within the last few years on that, but there is, of course, still substantial room for improvement, both in the system of selection itself and the expedition of seeing it through. There is great importance in seeing that the people go to the right place, that they are given the right initial training, whether they go to carefully-selected farms or whether it is possible to establish training

grounds away from the cities where they can get the rudiments of agricultural knowledge before they are placed with farmers. That, and what Mr. Graham called the "follow up" policy afterwards are very essential.

What I think it is very important to remember is that the indiscriminate system of migration without care does involve tremendous waste. There is an appalling waste of human capital and of actual capital when people cross the oceans, spend some years there, fail and come back again; spend years in trying to make something out of a farm which is too far away from the railway to make it profitable: that farm ought never to have been occupied until the railway was within 10 or 15 miles of it. In all those ways there is a tremendously important field for guidance and for careful planting. After all, you may dump people in the cities, as the Americans have done, I think, with not too happy results. But when you are considering a policy which is mainly one of settlement on the land you have got to remember that a man can only be planted on the land like any other plant, and that great care has got to be taken that he is helped to take root properly.

The Group System.

In that connection I should like to say a word endorsing what Colonel Buckley and the Minister of Labour said about the importance of the group system, meaning by that nothing in the nature of a communistic or a joint-stock system, but that of settling close. together people who have got a common interest, whether they come from the same part of the United Kingdom or are united by other ties, say, belonging to the same service or the same regiment or something of that sort. It is so essential in settlement to recognise the importance of the social and gregarious side of people. When you want people to contend with a wholly new and very difficult environment it is a great help that at any rate socially they should not feel too much among strangers. I do not mean they should not be well mixed up with the inhabitants of the Dominion to which they go, but that they should also be in sufficiently close touch with a sufficient number of people akin to them, and perhaps already old acquaintances, to feel at home socially when they have to struggle with the other new and unfamiliar problems. That is specially important in the case of the women. It is the friendly intercourse among women, the gossip about old associations even, that may see a colony through and overcome difficulties which it would not otherwise face.

Then there is the other important aspect about the group system to which Mr. Bruce referred in connection with irrigation, namely, that closer settlement is very economical; it means a greater amount of production for the same amount of capital put into railways and the same amount of capital put into schools and for every other purpose; you can get more out of the same scheme in the long run, though it does undoubtedly require more Government care and supervision than any scheme of simply letting people take their chance

and peppering them over the vast surface of the country. I think, too, that the group system lends itself more particularly to the settlement of those people who have got a little capital of their own. and who have got considerable enterprise and are not, except quite temporarily, content to work under others. Of course, as you know, in this country to-day, what with ex-officers and the great output of our public schools and the limited openings for the professional classes, we do turn out a very large surplus of young men of character, ability, good education and energy, and if not with substantial capital at any rate in most cases just a little, which, with some financial assistance, will see them through a long way. I feel in that way, given its peculiar circumstances, South Africa has followed a very wise policy, and I am delighted to hear from Mr. Burton that she means to expand it still further, because she has gone in for the policy of attracting that very class of people with a small amount of capital, and in that way, without having to raise Government capital, she has in fact brought in something like two and a half millions of capital from this country with several hundred settlers into South Africa during the past twelve months.

The Psychological Difficulty.

I do not wish to detain the Conference at any greater length, but I should like to say just one word more about what Colonel Buckley referred to as the psychological difficulty. Of course, one has always got to fight against the sense of strangeness, the unknown, but in an Empire like ours we can overcome that by greater development of mutual trade, by the spreading of better information, by better service in our newspapers, by cheapening the postage rates and by encouraging communication between settlers and friends at home, perhaps by airship development, and not least by facilities for enabling the settler in the Dominions to come home again after a few years on easy terms to visit his friends.

Importance of Creating a Right Mental Attitude towards Oversea Settlement.

Besides that I think the important thing that we have got to create is the right mental attitude in all our communities. For instance, in this country we are still far too much under the domination of the idea that this business of migration and settlement is simply a sort of safety-valve to unemployment.

From that point of view, it is not considered by one section of people until a grave unemployment crisis has arisen, and by others it is looked upon as an attempt to dodge our social responsibilities, to push people out of the country, instead of facing our social and economic responsibilities towards them. Now, we want to get away from that point of view and to treat it as a policy of building up trade, building up Empire, and helping social reform. The people with whom we have the most difficulty are the very people who are always keenly interested in such a reform as town planning. We have got to make people in this country understand that Empire settlement is only town planning on a large scale, and

that Empire development is only social reform writ large. On the other hand, you have got a similar difficulty in the Dominions. You have, on the one side, the type of person who simply thinks of immigration in terms of getting cheap and adaptable labour. The cheaper it is and the more readily adaptable it is, the more he is favourable to it. He would prefer the sheep skin clad Galician, regardless of what kind of citizen he makes in future, to the less adaptable, but in the long run sturdier and more self-reliant Britisher. On the other hand, you have got the Labour objection arising from the same point of view, which simply thinks of competitors. Now, we have got to create the point of view which thinks not of recruiting labour, but of recruiting citizens. Anything that can be done to promote that point of view in the Dominionsit cannot be done by legislation, but it can be done by the influence of those at the head of affairs-anything that can be done to get that point of view strengthened, to create the atmosphere that makes for a ready welcome of the immigrant when he lands, is all to the good. This whole business of settlement is an intensely human business. Your new settler, when he lands and passes the formalities of the Immigration Department and finds himself in his new country is very sensitive, very touchy, very easily discouraged, very much like a new boy at a strange school. At that moment anything in the nature of a friendly word, a hand-shake, or a little bit of good advice, makes the whole difference in the world. I do hope that those who have the whole of this policy of development at heart, those who perhaps remember what they themselves or their brothers or sons met with over here during the war, will realise how much they can help individually towards making this gr at policy a success.

Even Distribution of Empire Population a Fundamental Need.

Indeed, while I fully agree that the development of Empire settlement can only go on hand in hand with the development of trade and the spread of capital, I do feel that it is the basic element of the whole problem of development. The sound distribution of our population in the Empire is the key to social and economic well-being in every part. If I may add one thing further, it is also the key to the problem of defence. In other discussions during this Conference I shall have to point out to the representatives of the Dominions the enormous burden, which the defence of the Empire imposes upon this country, over and above the terrible burdens. imposed upon us by social conditions largely due to over-population. The answer, which I know I shall get from the Dominions, is that while willing to help to the extent of their capacities, those capacities are, in fact, limited by the very fact that they are faced with the problems arising from under-population, with great tasks of development which need to be done before they can have a population that can play an adequate part in the defence of the Empire. In those two arguments there is one common element, one common obstacle-over-population here, under-population in the Dominions. Now, if we can, during the years of peace and I hope