READY-MADE FRUIT FARMS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 96, 13 October 1911, Page 7

READY-MADE FRUIT FARMS.

UTILISING PRISON LABOR. SIR JOHN FIXDLAY'S SPEECH. Tn the course of his speech in Auckland the other night. Sir John Findlsiy said lie had been so impressed with the fruit-growing possibilities of the Xorth Island that he had advocated the planting of 10,000-acrc blocks in fruit trees by prison lalror every five years, cutting the area up at the expiration of that period into ."iO-aere fruit farms and dairy pastures. He advocated that prison' labor should be employed in doing this instead of in purely afforestation work in other parts. Fruitgrowers, however, had got the idea, that what he proposed was prison labor fruit-farming. Nothing could be more ridiculous. The opposition given by the fruit-growers, nevertheless, proved so strong throughout the Dominion that he was unable to carry his proposal into effect, but he had not yet given up hope of seeing his policy in actual working operation. By the employment of waste prison labor i n t,uch a scheme they would be able to provide these farms nt such a low rate that the fruiMamier would find no difficulty in making them pay. * |

He instanced what had been done at Waerengn. There, he said, in a few years; what had been a miserable desert land had been converted into a magnificent fruit land. (A voice: "But what did it cost?")' It cost £OOOO. If they could do;:that at Waerenga what could they not do in the Xorth and in, the South of Auckland within a few years? He did not see why. with the development of the.Xorth of Auckland and the South of Auckland in fruit-growing, we ■ shou!<l not soon be independent of Tasmania or any other fruit-growing country,, and fruit which in New Zealand at present was a forbidden luxury to the working man would form one of the principal items in his everyday diet.