NEW ZEALAND FARMERS

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9410, 2 April 1909, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND FARMERS

A LONDON OPINION. ’ “There could be iio more .ideal existence for a man with a few hundred pounds at his command than to occupy one of these small farms.” Mr W. ti. Campbell, speaking at the annual meeting of shareholders in Messrs Robert Campbell & Sons, in London, was loud in his praises of the life and conditions of thVNew Zealand small farmers. Ha thought especially that the occupants of their late freeholds in the Waitaki Valley (the laud purchased from the company by the New Zealand Government) were bound to thrive under the' new conditions allowed to them by that Government. They could imagine the profits likely to be earned by the industrious settler, working with bis family 200 acres of agricultural land. “One of the greatest assets of New Zealand,” said Mr Campbell, “is its climate, especially when account was taken of the periodic droughts occurring in Anstrtalia. If you look at the map of the world I think that you will .see that a climate favour-able-to colonisation by the English race is comparatively limited. 1 was

talking the other day with a man who had resided lor a number of years in Queensland, and when e described to me the conditions under which our fellow countrymen, live in the backfalocks of the Colony I did not think that a New Zealander would like to change lots with them A settler in the centre of Australia desirous of reaching one of the principal towns has to travel in his buggy a distance of 20, 30, or 50 miles to the nearest railway station, ' and then he has a journey of hundreds of miles before he reaches his destination. In the case of your Waltaki farmer in New Zealand his land often adjoins the railway; at all events some six miles bring him to the tiain,;,and a journey of some 40 miles lands him at the .port of Oamaru. ~ “As an Englishman, ’’ observed the chairman in conclusion, “I must say I cannot bub admire the policy of the ' New Zealand Government in thus creating a population of small proprietors ; and 1 cannot but wonder at the stupidity of our rulers here who have never had the sense to establish a well-thought-out scheme of Government emigration* ahd an Imperial Board to regulate the commercial relations between ourselves and our colonies. The obstinacy of George 111. and his advisers in adhering to a few trumpery taxes lost ns the United States. The carelessness and indolence of the so-called statesmen who have governed this country for the last fifty years has thrown away chances of establishing onr surplus population in comfortable homes in Greater Britain, united to the Mother Country by intimate ties of tbeir common interest in the trade of the Empire, which may never occur again ’ ’ 1