NEWS AND NOTES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1938, Page 9

NEWS AND NOTES

VARIOUS ITEMS OF INTEREST The Farmer’s Fault. It was reported to a meeting of the Dunedin Vocational Guidance Association by its officer (Mr T. Conly) that in the past six years 2200 boys had gone from Auckland to farm work, and that 90 per cent were still satisfied with country life. This state of affairs, which he quoted on the authority of the Auckland delegates to a conference held last month in Wellington, was in striking contrast with the position in Dunedin, where so few city boys would enter on farming careers and where country boys were asking that town work should be found for them. “This can be attributed in part to the Otago farmer’s regular and persistent announcement that theirs is a hopeless and bankrupt calling,” Mr Conly said. “Few parents are anxious to send their sons to a career so evidently devoid of any prospects. One might wonder whether our next generation of farmers will come from the North Island.” An Unusual Criterion. Probably every visitor to New Zealand from overseas has a different means of determining the prosperity of the country in which he is travelling. Different people base their opinions on different criteria, and it is improbable that many employ the test which is applied by Mr Hugh MacGregor, of the British Central Press Agency, London, who is at present visiting Dunedin. He states that he . judges the prosperity and wellbeing of a community by the appearance of the middle-aged women he sees in the streets. If they have a wellnourished, attractively dressed appearance, if their feet arc well shod and their accessories are in good taste, he decides that the people as a whole arc prosperous and happy. Explaining h’s view, he said that the middle-aged women are mostly the mothers of a country, and if they look prosperous then everyone else must be the same, because the women will see to the welfare of their children before they begin to worry about themselves and their own comforts. Mr MacGregor remarked in this connection that throughout his tour of the Dominion he had been impressed by the complete absence ol sickly or miserable-looking children.