THE PUMICE LANDS.
UTILISATION BY EX-SOLDIERS. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. Hon. Guthrie recently inspected the pumice lands in the centre of the North Island, with a view to considering their suitability for settlement by soldiers or other settlers. He says the pumice lands had been wrongly condemned because they were not understood. There were great possibilities in the lands, but they required time, expert knowledge, and capital to bring them into production, and for that reason he didn't think it feasible to place soldiers on the undeveloped land in small holdings. The Government could not simply place the soldiers on the land and then consider the matter ended. It had a greater responsibility to see they were of a class and with the means to make success of their venture. Therefore it might be much easier to settle the soldiers without much capital on land in other parts of New Zealand, which could more quickly be brought into a state of production, and without the same capital expenditure. He had stated to a deputation at Rotorua tha+- he would be prepared, if Cabinet approved, to place a hundred returned soldiers on a Government block of 12,000 acres of pflmice lands to work on wages under skilled supervision in bringing land into production. When they had training on land, and it was sufficiently developed, they would be given the option of taking up sections on any of the Government tenures they might choose. He was not prepared to recommend the Government to buy other lands on which to make this experiment when it had thousands of acres of the same class of country in its possession already awaiting development.
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Taranaki Daily News, 29 March 1919, Page 5
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280THE PUMICE LANDS. Taranaki Daily News, 29 March 1919, Page 5
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