the American collapse at the end of 1907. In 1909 and 1910, with reviving trade, emigration again increased, and in 1911, in spite of good trade, British emigration beat all previous records. The record of German emigration, which we shall presently have occasion to consider, exhibits as to the last three decades of the nineteenth century features very similar to our own. In the ten years which ended in 1880, there was a large German emigration; in the ten years which ended in 1890 there was exceedingly large German emigration; in the last ten years of the nineteenth century German emigration fell just as ours fell. Then all resemblance in this respect between the two nations ceased. While British emigration, as we have seen, again swelled, reaching gigantic proportions in the year 1911, German emigration became an almost negligible quantity. The explanation of these remarkable facts is easily to be found. In the present century our self-governing Colonies have set themselves to attract population to their shores from the heart of the Empire. Enormous sums have been spent by them to induce the people of the United Kingdom to transplant themselves across the seas. The Canadian official advertising for colonists has become as thorough as the efforts of the publicity departments of soap and pill manufacturers. Handsome emigration offices have been opened in the chief British thoroughfares, with shop windows making a wonderful display of pictures of jolly homesteads, of sheaves of yellow corn, of piles of incredibly red-cheeked apples. Who can wonder if the passer-by, an inhabitant of one of our dreary and dirty cities, has his imagination fired by prospects of plenty in a beautiful land? The newspapers have been diligently worked by the official emigration agents. In a popular newspaper one may see an expensive advertisement setting out the glories and advantages of Canadian life, accompanied, by arrangement and as part of the advertising contract, with a column editorial puff which outrivals the enthusiasm of the official advertisement. This is the kind of announcement which the Canadian Emigration Office puts before the British workman: Canada offers you 160 Fat and Fertile Acres for Nothing in the Land of Glorious Sunshine and Opportunity. Wheat raising per acre costs 30s. (thirty shillings) and realises sixty shillings. Two years' rent of an English farm will purchase freehold improved land of equal area in Canada. Wanted at once, for permanent employment, on farms in Western Canada, 5000 experienced farm hands. Average yearly wages 601. to 70l. and found. 1000 married couples wanted. Nor does this sort of thing exhaust the enterprise of Canadian emigration officers. They send to the rural districts handsome vans, which carry into remote villages exhibits of produce which speak of paths that drop fatness and of valleys standing thick with corn. Who can wonder if the agricultural labourer turns, from the British road which so often leads to the rural workhouse, to a land which promises so much and which can scarcely give him. less than he has? Is it not rather surprising that more do not listen to the voice of the Canadian charmer? In the last year or two Australia, which for so long foolishly practised a policy of exclusion, has realised that Australia can only be maintained a white country by encouraging immigration. Accordingly, she has followed the example of Canada in luring the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. All over the country at this moment there are exhibited posters of great artistic merit, in which the picture of a beautiful girl standing under a tree loaded with blossom draws the attention of the wayfarer to the fact that Australia exists, and invites him to make his home in a land of promise. South Africa is now to join in the pursuit. On the 30th of December 1911 Colonel Leuchars, Minister of Commerce in the Union Government, announced that the Government would shortly introduce a large settlement scheme, which is to include the attraction of immigrants from oversea. The practical success of this Colonial advertising for population may be measured by Table B, which shows the destination of British emigrants in recent years. It will be seen that the greatly increased emigration which we are now experiencing is mainly due to a movement of population within the British Empire. In 1911 the United States took but 50,000 out of a total emigration of 262,000, and all but 2000 of the remainder went to places within the Empire. Canada took 135,000; Australasia took 66,000; even South Africa took nearly 8000, or as many as Canada took as recently as 1900. No other nation has to bear the brunt of an emigration of such character. No other nation has colonies of any consequence in this connexion. The forces which are at work drawing the lifeblood from the heart of the British Empire to its extremities do not exist for Germany. There are no little German daughternations tempting German workmen to new lands where the German language is spoken and where German traditions obtain. And the existence of the United States is, for the purposes of British emigration, also a magnet of the most potent character. It possesses, in the greatest power supply of the world, the greatest attraction for population known to economics. The United States does not find it necessary to advertise for immigrants; coal draws them to her. Between the British self-governing Dominions and the United States of America, we have offered to the British emigrant a wide choice of new lands where the British language is spoken, and where he need not feel more a foreigner' than if he left one part of the United Kingdom for another. Let us refresh our memories as to the present distribution of the white population of the British Empire. It is shown with sufficient accuracy in Table C, by which we are reminded that there are less than 15,000,000 white people in all the British Empire outside these islands. Of these 15,000,000, fully onethird are foreigners or of foreign descent. The entire British Empire, that is, contains not more than 55,000,000 whites of British descent. Thus we see the vast spaces of the British Dominions in urgent need of population; we cannot wonder at the extraordinary efforts which are being made by the Dominion Governments to obtain immigrants from the United Kingdom, and we must expect those efforts to be maintained or increased. In view of this drain upon our vital resources, let us proceed to examine the feeding of the central reservoir of population, upon which the Colonies are making such an insistent call. We saw at the beginning that in the first nine months of 1911 the natural increase of population in the United Kingdom-the excess of births over deaths-was 329,710. It is probable that the complete statistics of 1911 will show a natural increase of about 440,000. Emigration in 1911 being about 260,000, the increase of population was therefore about 180,000. Thus last year the population of the United Kingdom increased by a mere 0.4 per cent., and it is clear that it needs but a small and only too probable further fall in the rate of natural increase, combined with an only too probable further increase of emigration, to bring about an actual decline in our population in the near future. At this moment we cannot be sure that such a reduction will not take place in the present year. The natural increase of the population, it cannot too clearly be borne in mind, is dependent not upon birth-rate alone, but upon the combined effects of birth-rate and death-rate. The birth-rate has a natural limit in point of increase, and an unnatural limit at zero; the death-rate cannot be reduced below a certain point, although we do not know definitely what that point is. With a stationary, or even with a falling birth-rate we may add to the rate of natural increase by reducing the death-rate, but only within limits. It is interesting to see what has taken place in this regard in the United Kingdom in the last twenty-five years. Here are the facts: |