The Daily News. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6. THE SETTLERS' CRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 6 August 1907, Page 2

The Daily News. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6. THE SETTLERS' CRY.

The cry <>!' the settler is not insistent, lie is. as a genera] thing, too much occupied in lighting tor a crust lo have any time for public whining. When lie uies. however, there is generally very ji.mkl reason. Closer settlement is all very well in theory, and in practice, under fair conditions, it is also-good. The methods of sell ling areas U well known. The Government buys a large estate. This large estate (we will take Flaxbourne for an example) has supported one man and bis family and the few workers necessaiy to muster sheep and to do the work involved by the possession of a large area. On the assumption that it is p unfair to the landless for one person or a small number of persons to hold large areas, the Government "cuts it up." People, many of them not knowing what area may lie depended upon to return a living wage are induced by promises of immediate railways, immediate roads, immediate schools, liberal treatment as regards money for improvement, to take up small blocks (even as.small as ten acres) under the belief that there is support in it for a family. The practical man knows very well that no ten acres situated at any distance from a mar-ket--cut oil', in fact, by lack of railways and road—is adequate to sustain even a reasonable existence. The very small areas can only become profitable to the Icsm's or owneTs- by intense cultivation, a good market at the very gate of the paddock, so to speak, or a railway which gives rapid and frequent communication with a big city or town. In the case of i'laxbourne, the misguided people who believed that smifll areas of from ten to twenty acres were adequate, have discovered that an 'eight bob a day" laboring job for a bigger man is a better proposition than residence and starvation on an inadequate section. The Government. which paid enormous sums of borrowed money for estates threatens forfeiture for non-cmnplianee with residence and working conditions. It is su improper and destructive policy. The hardship is all the harder because there are in this colony very large areas of land lying waste and field by absentees. The big man who lives in England is not hurt even by the heavy land tax. On the whole it doesn't pay any small area-holder in New Zealand to work his holding, unless he can afford to go in for Thtense cultivation and is near enough to a 1 own which will take all the produce he can grow.