The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1911. TRAINING FARMERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 5, 30 June 1911, Page 3

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1911. TRAINING FARMERS.

The Australian correspondent of the London Times recently gave some interesting details of what was being accomplished in the Commonwealth in the way of training farmers. ,The Dreadnought scheme of boy immigrants stirred up all the States to see how far the scheme could be made, adaptable to their own needs. The Hawkesbury College (New South Wales) gives a three years' course of a very full and wide-reaching character. At the Government farms up-coun-try, specialist students will be accommodated —dairying and butter-making is to be studied at Wollongbar, in the Rich' mond river district, mixed farming at Glen Innes, on the New England tableland, orchard management at Dural, near Sydney (in the citrus fruit district), at Bathurst, in the apple-country, and at Wagga, where there arc of acres within fifty miles of the farm thoroughly suitable for "dried-fruit" growing—apricots, currants, sultanas, prunes, etc. The Yanco farm will demonstrate irrigation methods. Bathurst studies the crossbreeding of sheep; Berry the breeding of dairy cattle; Wagga and Cowra, and probably Coolabab, near, Dubbo, will train intending wheat-grow-ers in the needs of their particular districts. These farms, of course, are not specially devised for immigrants, and new-comers will have to take their chance of obtaining entry; but with the new buildings now in course of erection, or approved of, it is unlikely that any one will be 3hut out. The Government, indeed, will be only too glad to increase the accommodation directly there is a call for it. As for the .simple training, it has been in existence in New South Wales for some time, neglected and halstarved. At Pitt Town, on the Hawkesbury, the Government some years ago established a sort of refuge for the unemployed; later on a portion of the area was devoted to the training of town boys in country habits, the boys being care, fully separated from the "casual labor" element. It was then found that the Sydney lad had little desire to go on the land—be was too much in demand in the city, where for a long time a dearth of boys has afflicted employers of all kinds. The next suggestion was to use the halfempty farm for temporarily housing and partially training immigrants who could not get work the moment they arrived; but the late Government prided itself on getting work for its own State-aided immigrants, and deliberately discouraged any others; consequently an order was issued forbidding the director of the farm to accept any but local hoys. When Mr. Williamson, of the Central Unemployed Body, was taken to visit the farm, he found there 18 boys only, of whom 10 would have come under the ban of that order had not a subordinate Minister quietly set it aside for the time being; at the same time the farm had accommodation for 32 boys, and room for 200 if dormitories were provided. The training given there was of the simple character necessary to make the pupils acceptable on a country farm as beginners, "The farmer likes our boys," said the director, a keen enthusiast and an admirable manager of boys; "he can still teach them something, whereas if they come to him from the Hawkesbury College they want to teach him." Now it is to this farm, and to many more like it yet to be established, that the New South Wales Ministry looks tor its most valuable immigrants. "We must manufacture our farm-laborer," said Mr. C'armichnel the other day; "Pitt Town farm has already accommodation for about 50 youths who could be thoroughly trained to milk, harness, and so on, ia a period of three months; and I believe any large scheme for agricultural settlement will lie chiefly in this direction." The latest scheme of the "Dreadnought" trustees, under which four or five hundred boys are to be sent out every year for Pitt Town training, was at once approved by the new Premier, subject only to the condition that the Agent-General must approve of the boys sent. About that condition this must be said—that unless the Agent-General quickly grasps the fact that this Ministry has abandoned the "experienced agriculturalist" fetish, and its corollary the "country-bred" lad. the power of veto will be taken out of his hands. His new masters are in earnest. So we begin to feel that a practical immigration scheme is in working order. The boys, if we are told true, are waiting—"over 4000 youths of 17," reports a recently-returned Australian, "are annually turned out of London post offices, having exhausted their usefulness, to make room for others younger." The farm, with its excellent training, is at last available, and there are to be more. The demand for trained boys is at present quite beyond the possibility of satisfaction in New South Wains, just as it is in this country, but here the labor unions .see bine death starintr them in the face in the arrival of a hamlf.nl of Sedgwick boys, whilst in Australia the Lalior party are encouraging the immigration of these lads as well as adults as immigration has never be<(n eneouragad, before. > ," 7 /