The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, JULY 24, 1916. IMPORTANT TO PARENTS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 160, 24 July 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, JULY 24, 1916. IMPORTANT TO PARENTS.

("With which is incorporated The Tai , b ape Post and Waimarino News.)

What is to become of our boys is a problem that is giving some concern to quite an army of misguided educational enthusiasts. They see —we all see —our lads drifting year after year into the -huge, and still increasing ruck of unskilled labour. The latest development, the very newest idea, is to appeal to the Government, and, in some cases, to local bodies, for sections of land contiguous to public schools, appoint thoroughly scientific instructors, and go in for what may be termed a wholesale teaching, with a view to a wholesale turning out of boys well grounded in farming. It *» just another of those addle-pated notions with which educational faddists sometime s become afflicted. If this country were short of farmers, practical farmers, men who are now waiting in hundreds for land to farm, their's would be logical insistance, but the fact —stern and real fact, not a political fact —is that we have a great many more farmers now than we can, or are disposed to find land for. The words, "natural law of supply and demand," have been degraded into nothing more than a political shibboleth; their logical application is rarely suggested or acted upon. Here we have hundreds c* would-be fanners without land to farm, and it is proposed to institute embryo agricultural colleges at every public school to help in swelling the vocationless; the landless crowd. When means are instituted for providing a huge supply of anything the promoters can rarely be accused of not ' knowing what is to become of their product. Perhaps our educationists can enlighten ti s as to what is to become of their annual crop of young farmers ? No, they have commenced at the wrong end, or at a point of least resistance. To have got the land in view for the product of their agricultural classes when it is at the heyday of its qualification would have imperilled the whole of their ingenuously evolved fabric. There is no land for hundreds who are, with broken hopes, still waiting for it, then what i s the use of spending money and energy in still further insanely ;butting heads against tho law of supply and demand; where can be the advantage in ing huge armies of farmers annually if we refuse to give them the land to farm? If these well-meaning educational enthusiasts will organise an association that can compel the Go-

vernment to furnish the accessary land, then they will have accomplished the first and most essential factor to their success. Land in New Zealand i s sealed up, and instead of mope men going on to it every year, it is being aggregated so rapidly as to constitute a national, danger. Statistics are thrown at the people every year showing how many men have taken up land, and how much additional land has been settled, but what is of the most 1 vital importance to know is, how many men have gone off the land through the viciousness of the principle of land aggregation. The country that merely uses applicants for land in ekeing out a miserable existence while breaking in the almost impossible areas in the right away back blocks, is guilty of unmitigated cruelty, for after years of hard work land the worst of privations, they become easy victims to the land aggregator, and the country that encourages cumulations of its area is going to be a failure, that is as certain as that we live Then why pursue a course of education that is almost certain to entail a wasted youth on all those whose parents aere not rich enough to buy land in a market that is rapidly rising. What is possible in land acquisition to-day may be utterly out of the question when these farm instructed boys require it. If the proposal to spend money on teaching farming at our public schools is persisted in withour first assimilating our land laws to the project, failure, and a wasted youth, is the logical outcome. To take up a lad's youth in making him believe he is going to become something that there are a thousand chances to one against, is wicked. The highly important problem of what to do with our lads, in this country's best interests, needs to be thought out free of all political partisanship. It is the supreme question in a young country, one that cannot be over-considered. We may cast behind us the thought and knowledge that the intelligence of the masse s is becoming a force that must eventually exert a powerful influence on the country's destiny, but it is a force that has to be guaged and provided for, and the surest way to avoid the semblance of anything of a revolutionary character is to realise ■ the obvious, and shape our laws accordingly. Do inot let us systematically fool our school boys that they are going to be farmers when the only chances they will ever stand is in their financial Ability to buy from speculators and aggregators, rather let ub teach them the true position, and then leave it to their parents to say whether the. youth, of the lads is to be spent on learning farming, -or whether it shall be devoted to acquiring education in something in which prospects of success 'are immeasureably better. la Australia,-where there are huge , areas of land still unsettled, where every possible inducement for lads to ; take to farming is given by the ready provision of land, only about eight hundred chose farming out of nearly seven thousand boys on leaving school, while over two thousand or them went into commercial pursuits. We believe this production suicide is worse in New Zealand than in Australia. Every man amongst us Is equally responsible with the nighest in the land for this lamentable condition. It must toe obvious to the most thoughtless that the country putting two thousand out of seven thousand men annually into handling and exchange of products; over four thousand into other avenues in which they become, to a considerable extent, parasites on the producers, and only eight hundred or a thousand into farming, can never have that success that will ■ avoid social upheaval. Men on the i land will have a rude awakening if the country's deaf ear to the cry for land is not attended to, for they cannot • support the army of parasites that is rapidly accumulating round them. If j the lads in our public schools are to be taught farming, then let us. shape our land laws in the direction of giving them some reasonable tangible | prospect.