The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 17, 1913. LAND BALLOTING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 305, 17 May 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 17, 1913. LAND BALLOTING.

The system of hind balloting, while it has been revised by successive (iovernments with the honest object of putting it upon :i proper basis, is still far from perfect, and acts very harshly upon a number of would-be settlers. There are at present in this district two stalwart young fellows, both with 12 or 15 years' practical experience of farming, and possessed of a joint capital of .111000, who have missed at three successive ballots during the last few months, and who were refused to allow participation in a recent ballot for land on the Hauraki Plains on the ground that preference had to be given to married men. Naturally they are somewhat disheartened and are contemplating transferring their attentions—and incidentally their capital and their experience—to Queensland, or some other country where they can secure land with less formal restrictions. One is a Xew Zeala'nder born, who has worked for fifteen years at practical farming, and the other has added five years on the land in the- Dominion to a previous twelve years' experience of farming in the Old Country. These are-exactly the stamp of men that, we want to settle our lands, but they are debarred from the ballot because they have-not chosen to give hostages to fortune by "accepting "bonds matrimonial." The average | chimney sweep and the man who peddles race cards at the street corners is an eligible applicant at land ballots so long as lie has a better half in some tworoomed cottage in tlie town, even though his experience of farming may be limited to the value of soot as a manure. We recognise, of course, that it is in the interests of the country that married > men should be accorded some degree of ) preference in the allotment of land, but -. surely experience, especially when it is combined with a moderate capital, j should also count for something. Here f\ we are in danger of losing two excel- ! lent settlers, exactly the stamp of men -■' that we want, simply because they caninot participate in the subdivision of j Crown lands. They cannot,- as they say, ' afford to purchase the sheep country they are looking for, because it would not allow of an ample margin for working the land, but they are willing and anxious to secure a Government leasehold on such terms as would permit of their retaining sufficient capital to build a small house and profitably work their i section. There is something radically j wrong in an administration which ex- | eludes settlers of this class from remainI jng in the country.