WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1918, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

LAND SETTLEMENT. (From Our Own Correspondent). The allusion of the Minister of Finance to the need for ''small settlement" and for an enormously increased number of people on the land "to assist in-meeting the country's obligations without resorting to crashing taxation," is taken to indicate renewed activity by the Government in this direction. Of late there has been a tendency on the part of the Lands Department, in its very proper desire to make the best possible provision for returned soldiers anxious to take up rural occupations, to go slow with settlement of other descriptions. Of course no one can reasonably object to preference 'being given to returned soldiers, Out in any effective scheme for multiplying the number of small settlers to assist in meeting the country's obligations generous provision must be made for the civilians .who have had no chance of going to. the' war and who are prepared to take Up their share of the burden in the way suggested by Sir Joseph Ward. The general tendency of population during the last three years has been to drift towards the big centres and. this can be counteracted only by special inducements to city dwellers to move out into the country.

OFFICERS' SEPARATION ALLOWANCE. The British scale of separation allowance is now substantially more liberal than the New Zealand scale as far as officers are concerned. A cablegram states that the allowance to the children of subalterns and captains will be £2 each per month up to a maximum of £8 a month, and the age limit is extended to eighteen years for boys and twentyone years for girls. New Zealand pays no separation allowance for the children of officers, but allows 3s a day to the wife of a second-lieutenant or lieutenant. The separation allowance of Is a, day allowed for the child of a private or n.c.o. in New Zealand ceases at the age of sixteen years in the ease of both iboys and girls, as does also the pension of a child. Something more will be heard about allowances when Parliament meets next June. HARVEST LABOR. Reports that are reaching Wellington indicate that the threatened scarcity of harvest labor is being averted. The Labor Department and the employment agencies are not being pressed for harvest workers; in fact they have men in hand, while the branches of the Farmers' Union are not reporting any serious 'scarcity of hands, though they were disposed to take rather a gloomy view of the outlook a while ago. The unexpected elasticity of the labor market as far as the harvests are concerned has been one of the minor surprises of New Zealand's war experiences. Each season since 1914 there have been predictions of trouble. But somehow the farmers have managed to get along in spite of the heavy enlistments from tile country districts and the depletion of the laboring classes. The explanation presumably is that the farmers and their families, faced with a difficulty, have overcome it by dint of hard and persistent work -without appealing for help. .