THE CRY OF THE "BACKBLOCKER."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 246, 7 March 1913, Page 4

THE CRY OF THE "BACKBLOCKER."

Has it occurred to those who are responsible for the administration of the land laws and public works of the Dominion that if faith had been kept with the settlers who were placed on the bush country under the Laud Act of 1802 the country would be in a very different condition from what we lind it to-day? This question is asked by the Dunedin Star. When the settlers cleared and grassed the country and fenced their sections and erected homesteads they performed their part of an implied contract (continues our contemporary). That the rivers would be bridged and roads made so that they would have reasonable access to railway and market was clearly understood, and that part of the work devolved upon the local body or the State. Local authorities had power to levy rates on the settlers, and this power was exercised, sometimes years before a shilling was spent on behalf of the people who were rated. If they attempted to resist the imposition they were forthwith summoned to the Magistrate's Court and subjected to the severest pains and penalties. When they were able to do so they borrowed money under the Loans to Local Bodies Act and expended it on roadmaking. In many places, however, metal was extremely scarce, and with the means at their disposal good roads were simply an impossibility. Under such circumstances was it not the duty of the State to see that roads were properly made? Although a quarter of a century has elapsed since the' settlers were induced to take up the bush country the amount of metalled roads completed in the settlements is very trifling. Roads have been formed, but they are nearly all summer roadsavailable for wheel traffic, for three months in the year, and the rest of the time up to the horses' knees in mud. People with residences many miles from a railway or township, provided only with roads of this description, suffered from disadvantages and discomforts such as few outside of their ranks can properly realise. Xo mails, no newspapers, deprived of social intercourse, beyond the reach of aid in case of illness or accident, unable to obtain supplies of food, clothing or medicine, no matter how urgently required, they led for weeks and months a miserable existence. Worse, than all. those who had families had the unspeakable mortification of seeing their children growing up cither poorly educated or virtually not educated at all. For how could they attend school with the roads in the condition described? Is it. then, surprising that after waiting for years in the hope that passable roads would be made, finding themselves isolated and cut off from the ordinary out and quit their homesteads directly a reasonable offer was made? The picuTe'drawn by our Dunedin contemporary applies with particular force to Taranaki. where settlers underwent untold privation and misery and loss through the mistaken policy of the Government's of placing people on land unfit for close settlement and inaccessible for all but a few months in the year. The present policy of building roads in advance of settlement is the only fair and proper one.