CULTIVATE THE SOIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 56, 28 May 1927, Page 14

CULTIVATE THE SOIL

CUT OUT UNEMPLOYMENT AUCKLANDER’S SUGGESTION One man has taken up the Prime Minister’s request for suggestions regarding the unemployed problem. He is Mr. Walter Richardson, of 66 Newton Road, Auckland. Teach the people to grow their own fruit and vegetables, he says, give them small plots of ground on which to do it, and much of the unemployment and dissatisfaction will cease. Mr. Ricardson describes himself as an “intense cultivator.” He will teach anyone to grow fruit and vegetables without asking any fee in return. His services will be free to those who ask for them, for he is of opinion that in cultivating the soil there is happiness and profit. Mr. Richardson suggests that around Auckland there is much country, at present covered in blackberry and weeds, which might be given to the unemployed in quarter-acre sections. These could be rented from the Government at a reasonable rental. He is an idealist in that he says the people who take the sections would build their own cabins by helping one another and thereby save the expense of employing builders to do the work. Every city, says Mr. Richardson, has its garden suburb, and he thinks that now is the time for Auckland to embark on a similar scheme.

“When it is a case of starving Russians or starving Armenians one cannot move for boxes being placed one’s nose, but with our own people it seems nobody’s business to collect money for them,” he says.

“I don’t means that this land should be given to the 'won’t works,’ ” said Mr. Richardson. “It should be given to the honest man who desires to do something for his wife and family. There are many people who are only too willing to take up these sections, but the rents are too high at present. If the Government will not do it, perhaps some company; or firm would.”-