COAL CREEK FLAT.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 336, 7 March 1874, Page 3

COAL CREEK FLAT.

(From our own Correspondent,')

- -March"*. ~

The general topic of conversation here is Mr. Holloway's mission to New Zealand. No doubt this visitjs a step in the right direction, for the British laborer will be enabled to learn for himself, through Mr. Holloway, what New Zealand really is, and what chances he has for bettering his condition by emigrating to New Zealand. But there happens to be in Otago the employer and the employed, the rich and poor ; of course the rich employer of labor ■will paint -Qtngn in glovring nolox -t<r~ Mr. Holloway, for every emigrant landed here will tend to enrich the rich, by competing with the laboring classes and reducing the price of labor. The laborer has no chance of acquiring land here to make a home for hitnsolf like he would have in Australia or America. Mr. Holloway should here and see for himself both sides of the question from both classes of Otago. and take a trip into the interior, for around Dunedin and the Taieri is no criterion for the whole o£ Otago.

Nearly all, if not quite all, the Crown land in Otago is in the grip of the squatter on a long lease, and whenever the Government want a piece for bona fide settlement there are great difficulties in the way, so the Government say ; and the few small blocks open for settlement on the deferred payment system are hedged about with difficulties. There is no difficulty for the squatter to obtaiu from 10 to 50,000 acres, no matter how the people may object ; but when the people want to make homes for themselves and obtain a few acres, they find it a moot difficult matter. Look at our district ; — what chance has a poor man with £100 to obtain 100 acres here. At the last land sale at Moa Flat, the sections were run up by a squatter to as much as £4 per acre, although a few months before, the same squatter obtained, without competition, direct from the Government, 50,000 acres for less than £1 per acre. To show that the residents here are desirous of obtaining land, look at the number of applicants for the sections on the small block opened lately on the deferred payment system at Roxburgh, and also at Tapanui. Threshing is vigorously carried on by the two threshers at work here. l Lancaster's powerful thresher is making short work of farmers' stackß at Moa Flat, and I hear it is giung satisfaction to the farmers. The quality of the grain is first-class.

Mr. Hewlett, the Wesleyan minister, has been compelled, through bad health, to resign his charge at Roxburgh, and has gone to England. Mining matters are in a prosperous state.