The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1929 THE LURE OF THE CITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 611, 13 March 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1929 THE LURE OF THE CITY

k GREAT deal of truth about the causes of unemployment and the hold-up of immigration was brought into prominence at a conference in Wellington yesterday on land settlement and migration problems, but no part of it was new. Everything that ■was said about the difficulties had been said before time and again by observers who are just as anxious as members of land settlement leagues to see New Zealand break away from stagnation and regain a magnetic position in respect of British emigration to the Dominions. It was hardly worth the expense of a conference, however, to reiterate the chronic fact that neither city lads nor farmers’ sons in this country are ready to jostle one another in eagerness to go on the land. And no one outside the Wellington conference of land leaguers will deny the declaration within it that “there must he something wrong when, in a country of the great latent possibilities of New Zealand, they had a chronic labour problem and could not absorb British immigrants.” There is something farwrong, hut one of the rvorst troubles afflicting the country is the persistent inability of statesmen and others to do anything worth while in the direction of putting things right. Nor will it be denied that the reluctance of town and country boys to take up farming as an occupation and as a healthy way toward sturdy independence and prosperity is an unhealthy sign. But what sort of encouragement has been given to New Zealand youth in recent years to seek lifetime comfort among tussocks, and what class of industrialists has been responsible for the discouragement of boys? Lads might be lured from the cities if farmers broke from the bad babit of centuries and, instead of grumbling about their hard fate and endless difficulties, admitted frankly that life on the land is not all misery and lack of money. It would be at least a pleasant experience for everybody, to say nothing about a stimulating influence at 'all, to hear primary industrialists declaring joyfully that there is nothing better than farming. Indeed, many farmers have not appeared for some time as being anxious to remain on the land as a good example for their own sons and also for city lads. There are 150,000 landowners in New Zealand, and during the past ten years there have been more than 300,000 land transfers. That orgy of speculation which has done so much to increase the financial troubles of farmers has been responsible for much of the failure of farming to lure the youth of the Dominion from the cities to the country. Still, the conference of delegates representing the New Zealand Land Settlement and Development League, of Auckland, and the Dominion Settlement Association, of Wellington, is hopeful. Moreover, it has asserted with confidence that there should he a vigorous policy of developing and settling new land in the Dominion. This, too, is the main policy of the new United Government, but so far it has done little more than talk optimistically about what it hopes to do in the radiant future. It may be noted that the chairman of the Wellington conference disagrees utterly from the statement frequently made, even by former responsible Ministers of the Crown, that all the land worth settling has been taken up. If Mr. A. L. Hunt, of Wellington, who as a small business man “pestered by farmers’ sons writing to him for work in the city,” has good reasons for his emphatic disagreement, he would help the new Ministers very appreciably by telling them exactly where their predecssors went astray in their surveys of the country. Members of land leagues would not only justify their enthusiasm, hut also would render splendid service in constructive political work if they could prepare a schedule of areas worth taking up in existing financial and economic conditions for settlement. The Reform Government, which certainly was not out of sympathy with the primary industries, apparently could not find many areas suitable for profitable settlement, and it spent a lot of money on the quest. It is surprising that politicians and representative men do not give more attention to the necessity of developing manufacturing industries for a quicker absorption of young New Zealanders and British immigrants in skilled employment. Experience in other countries has proved that tariff-protected local industry, even at its worst, is better than a costly development of inferior land, which never will become first-class settlement land at its best.