THe Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1928 FARMS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED!

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 477, 5 October 1928, Page 8

THe Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1928 FARMS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED!

A PITIABLE story of the plight of British coalminers has been “ told in a London newspaper by Mr. John Galsworthy, author and dramatist. After devoting the best part of a distinguished literary career to tracing imaginatively the life history of a typical English family with its roots deep in traditional pride and love of property, the observant creator of “Soames Forsyte” and liis smng clan has turned his penetrative genius to the coalminer’s portion of the great national heritage of riches and toil. Tt should not he difficult for Mi\ Galsworthy to create “A Colliers’ Saga.” At the first digging in grimy ground the dramatist has found material for an industrial tragedy. Out of 1,200,000 employees in the coal industry, 300,000 are at present unemployed. Of these 200,000 must bo regarded as permanently unemployed. That is to say, there never will be any work for them again at their own skilled occupation in the United Kingdom. Alone, that fact is enough to wring the heart of the meanest man of property and great possessions. But it really is only an episode in the national drama of unemployment. Over a million persons are out of work in the British Isles. Hundreds of thousands in the lamentable total are able-bodied men and youths on the edge of manhood, most of them with just as much sturdy pride and willingness to get on as any one of the Forsytes. But the majority of the compulsorily vagrant army has to depend on the unemployment insurance dole and demoralising charity. Their plight touches the core of Empire patriotism. Is there no place with a steady job for them in the greatest Empire the world has ever known? Mr. John Galsworthy asks, almost in despair; “Is it beyond statesmanship to devise a scheme of agricultural training in Great Britain for 30,000 youths, strong and accustomed to hard work?” The answer, of course, has to be the cold, harsh truth that it is hopelessly beyond the present calibre of mediocre statesmanship to devise the right scheme. It lias been observed in London that Mr. Galsworthy apparently is unaware of the extremely cautions attitude of the Dominions toward large-scale migration. It is clear that he does not know anything at all about the kind of politics most of the Dominions have to suffer with groans and disgust. There is more than a policy of caution in the attitude of Dominions’ politicians; there is also an extraordinary measure of sheer incompetence and political stodge. Look at the actual conditions in New Zealand, as an illuminating lesson. It lias an area of over 66,000,000 acres, and of that total some 43,000.000 acres are in occupation. But of the occupied area less than 19,000,000 acres are in cultivation. A farmers’ Government has been in power for 16 years. It has done everything it could think of doing to promote settlement and the prosperity of the man on the land. Within the past five years it has advanced nearly £15,000,000 to settlers. It has given relief in hardship, it has made all sorts of laws for the advancement of primary production, and it; has piled subsidy on subsidy to make farming better and better in every way. And yet only a third of the whole Dominion is under cultivation. Land leagues, land agents and all sorts of progressive politicians make themselves hoarse calling for more settlement, but when experts calmly get down to bedroek facts, they have to confess that, even with a gift of £1,150 from the British Government for the settlement of a British family on a New Zealand farm, the minimum cost would run to £3,000. If it were not for the preposterous price of land, and the burden of loan interest, thousands of New Zealanders, strong and accustomed to work, would rush to the land for a living.