CORRESPONDENCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3965, 17 November 1891, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

General Sooth.

[to the editor.]

Sir—The select invitation meeting in the Oddfellow's Hall at Chiist church in connection with General Booth's over sea scheme as outlined by the General himself must have been sadly disappointing to tlio.se of the audience who were not carried away by the commanding personality and prestige of the great chief of the Salvution Army. Jt is quite evident that the General is very much at sea when he attempts to formulate a scheme to settle people on land. Nor is it much wonder that with all his good sense and astuteness he should make mistakes which a little experience would obviate. As it wus, he simply tried to grapple wiih a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing, with the result that he made some very foolish statements which are only excusable on the score of his want of experience of the country and the nature of bush land. He first proposes to abtain a grant of land from the New Zealand Government for nothing or next to nothing (to use his own words). To manage i this land he would have fifty New Zealanders who would be prepared to clear the bush, tosow tho seed, and to build shanties so that the land < would be ready for occupation by those who would be sent out from the home farm. These latter would be seat out under special supervision, lest their morals should be corrupted, and would also be looked after here j an their arrival, in order to keep tbetn from contamination. In the morning after their arrival they would find a spade, » pick or a shovel wherewith to begin work at their new homes.' He does not think that it should be at all necessary that any settler should have more than five acres, with access to a common on which he might run his cow. In this way, says the General, he could have a few pigs in his stye, a few sheep, a vegetable and a fruit garden, and if his neigh bours grew more grain than they required, they would be able to exchange the surplus commodities. There would be a central depot where all the surplus could be brought and exchanged. The General further stated that he would make the settlement self supporting, and not lcok to the outside world for help, as it was intended to bring out persons who would be able to convert cue hides of cattle into leather, and make boots of it, and spin the wool and weave it into cloth. In support of the above he reminded his audience that there was a time when a mere handful of people inhabited New Zealand, and yet they managed to get along. It is difficult to read (be foregoing without a pitying smile, yet if be is reported right, such are the proposals which were gravely listened to by the august assemblage at Curistchurch only a few days since, and such is the scheme which the Premier said he considered well worthy of experiment in New Zealand, and that it was the duty of the Government to give General Booth every opportunity for carrying out his ideas on the principle that if it did not succeed it could be stopped and on the other hand if it did it could be extended. Verily this is excellent reasoning, and well worthy of Mr Ballance, who further said that he did not think the smallness of the area' o be allotted to each person a serious objection. Of the many wild theories for settling land in this Colony this last certainly takes the palm. I venture to say that nothing so utterly impracticable or Utopian has ever been suggested in the colony before. Such a scheme bristles with absurdities, and Mr Ballancs is the last man who should sanction such a thing. A self-sup-porting community, an exchange of surplus commodities, why if such a thing were possible it would be indirect contravention to the spirit of the present age ; to encourage such a thing in this young country would be criminal. It would be necessary to forget the triumphs of the last fifty years and go back and grovel in the dust of a hundred years ago. This is an age of machinery, an age of labour saving appliances of all kinds, and jt is impossible to fall back on the old jnethqd's ans ljye besides. tyjth a'l respect to the Salvation Army as an organisation, there is no body of nen on the free of the earth that would ba content to wear out their lives on five acres of land without hope or profit in a country where they can earn good wages. Such a thing is not to be expected. The t«»n iency of the present day is for people to mix as much as possible, and ap isolate*} pompauiiity is a luoftster that could not exist at *he present time.—l an, etc.,

Bush Sbttlkr,