Levin State Farm.

Manawatu Herald, 9 February 1897, Page 2

Levin State Farm.

The Government paid £4 per lora for the land originally. They hart put upon it improvements valued at £1 more. The land, therefore, standi them in £8 per acre over all. At this stage the Government find that it doesu't pay — that, in fact, it oan only be carried on at a loss. It is therefore decided to sell it, and Mr S^ddon comforts as by saying that " it is anticipated that £10 per acre will be realised for it." Now, if the State cannot make the farm pay at £8 per acre, what can the small settlers, who take it up at £10, be expected to do ? Either they will ruin themselves or else the experiment has proved that the State cannot carry on industrial work as efficiently or as economically as the individual — which is rather a knock fur those who clamour for State control of everything. The truth is that the Levin State farm has been a failure. Nothing else was to be expected of it. As a panacea for depression and lack of employment the idea was simply grotesque. A State farm is, after all, only a farm, whether it be managed by the Government or by a private owner, and if the many thousands' of farms scattered throughout New Zealand do not solve the unemployed difficulty fe it is not easy to see how two or three q in various localities owned by the Government can do it. There was a sharp debate on the Levin State farm during last session ; and if we may believe remarks made by the Government supporters who had visited the locality, the farm had been from the first a hopeless failure. The determination to sell the farm a few months after the debate shows that the friendly critics w.era not far wrong. The real cost to the colony of this and other experiments of a similar character will never be known until a new Government is instated in office, and then it is to be feared the colony will have an uncomfortable time of it for a while,— -Danedin Star.