SETTLING SOLDIERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17692, 1 August 1919, Page 6

SETTLING SOLDIERS

PRESENT SYSTEM CRITICISED. HOW TO AVOID LOSS OF CAPITAL. Mr M. S. H. Manning, of Christ church, who has been a practical farmer and has dealt in land, discussing the settling of soldiers, said that with the high prices of land and of produce there must inevitably be considerable losses of capital under a scheme which placed on farms men who had no practical knowledge of farming. It would be a wiser policy to bring down a scheme that would provide soldier settlers with the requisite knowledge before they were supplied with the capital When an estate was acquired, the number of soldiers it would accommodate should be calculated. Applications for sections should be received, and a ballot should he taken. The successful applicants should go on to the estate not as owners with Government capital, but as probationers, under a managerinstructor. Probation should continue for alxHit three years. The settlers should be paid wages during that term, and their wages should be a charge on the profits of the estate after interest and working expenses were met. They -might participate m the profits. At the end of the term of probation, most of them, if not all, would know whether farming was a suitable occupation for them, arid whether they wished to settle on that particular estate. The estate then could be subdivided, and a second ballot could be taken, applicants to be restricted mainly to those who had been .successful in the first ballot. Any who did not intend to stay on the estate could bo

replaced by other soldiers. If the estate was not sufficiently large to pay for a manager, it. might be conducted by a man m charge of another estate in the same district or two estates might be manage*! conjointly. If the Government continued its policy of placing men -without knowledge of farmu}- on the land, it would find j -would be spent uselessly, ?" d , tha f large areas would be thrown on its hands. He -was convinced that his scheme, or something Eke it, would prevent waste of Capital, and, at the same t ™ e ' would greatly help solcEers who had not had practical farming experience.