THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9110, 9 June 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

Let Us Love thk Land.—But, Why ? My Cousin Jim. Love of the Land.—At this same conference of the Farmers' Union, Mr J. A Gilruth delivered what all the newspapers have agreed was a very btrikng address. The gist of it all was that the youna men of New Zealand do, not love the land as they ought, that it is essential they should love the land, and that steps should ba taken to induce the:n to love the land. Here, as reported by the Wellington "Evening Post," is Mr Gilrut.i's peroration: — "Unless a love of the land was inculcated in the youth of the country, they would not stay in it. In cases youn? people had been made to loacne the land; he had *een dairy farms which wouli make any man luathe dairy farms; it had almost made him loathe milk. (A Voice: "And perhaps butter.") Concluding Mr Uil.'uth said: It has really been saddening to me to receive applications from young men asking to get imo a Government billet at £3 per week great God ! applications from men who ceuld go on the land and be men. Does that reflect credit on a cou.itry like this? What is the reason? Xhere must be something wrong; something earnest should really tie done to .make the people love the land." ( Applause.) Now that is all very well and very fine; but it does not apparently bring us much nearer to the desired object. V you would have a man love a thing (always provided that the thing is not a woman) you must see to it that the thing is worthy to be loved. ' Are we doing all we can to make the land attractive to our people? Are the conditions in the dairy-districts, for instance, such as are calculated to mane the young people love dairyfarming? Is life in the country districts, as a general thing, so delightful and varied that young men and women should desire it? I give my opinion for what it is worth. My answer to these questions is No, No, \No!'I have lived in country places in England—places in which education had not advanced to anything like our standard, in which there could be no pretense of such general prosperity as we in New Zealand so tirelessly boast of—and these places were very much more interesting than any country places I have as yet discovered in this Dominion. There was always a certain amount of joyous social activity. There were traditions of the district and of the family. There was summer and winter merriment and sport. My grandmother had a big dairy-farm, my cousins lived on farms near by, and I was a frequent visitor. There were no such conditions on those farms as I hear freely alleged with respect to dairy-farms in parts of New Zealand. There was, to start with, virtually, no child-labour. I never saw a small girl or boy milking a cow in Staffordshire; I never heard of children being expected to do much other work than their schoolwork on school days. lam strongly of the opinion that any part of our national prosperity in New Zealand that depends on the constant labour of chi\dren of tender years is not prosperity at all; but the bad fruit of barbarism and retrogression. I blame no man for not going on the land, or remaining on the land, if life on the land is not made profitable and attractive to him. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? It seems to me that in the country districts of New Zealand, as things stand, there are too few compensations and too few rewards. Parliament has got into such a habit of legislating along one line—of legislating, that is, for the industries and the woricers of the cities—that the needs and the interests of the men on the land have sometimes been overlooked. I know exactly the sort of rejoinder that a statement like that provokes. Someone will get up and tell me that this and that thing of use to the farmer is carried for nothipg on the railways. That is all very well, so far as it goes; but it doesn't go any great distance. If we have done all that we can reasonably do or the man on the land, why should Mi" Gilruth, who is a good servant of the Government, make these complaints and protests? He is not an alarmist; and he.is not an instinctive grumbler. He knows there is something wrong; and the only complaint one can urge against him is that he is not sufficiently explicit as to what the something may be. ******

Take the case of my cousin Jim. He was one of (those cousins I mentioned just now; and when he was quite a he moved with his father acrosss to Manitoba. There he grew to manhood, on a thriving farm by the Assinaboine River. The family prospered. Everything went well. But Assineboia, for all its ' fertility and wealth, was a searching region, off the track of civilisation, and Jim wa3 a studious man, and a confirmed lover of men and books. He published a novel, and then decided that he'd move to some country where prosperity could be got nearer to the crowd. He came ov'ar to New Zealand, studied condition.*, and didn't like them. H* found that he could make a living heri; but that he could not, on the suna outlay hope to make the profits that he could make in Manitoba. In short, the gains would not compensate for the- losses. He Vent bick. Wiy should a young man of keen social instinct and hiehly trained inteliigme—a man with a love of the land and a knowledge of it—prefjr the great Lone Land to New Zealand?-if, that id, everything U rig>)t with the conditions under whL'ti such msn may acquire land in this favoured country.