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Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2440, 1 March 1888, Page 2

A vkry excellent suggestion of a practical character has hem inaile by a clerical philanthropist in Fngland, the Rev. H. V. Mills, with a view to solving the " unemployed " question and mitigating tin; distress that prevails, in many parts of the United Kingdom, amongst the industrial section of the population. We are troubled in a measure with the same difficulty in this colony, and our large towns are becoming replete with numbers of people who are absolutely destitute and nnable to find occupation of any description by which they cm support their wives and children. There are no very encouraging signs that the condition of things with us generally is taking a turn for the better, and our public dispensers of eleemosynary help— the Charitable Aid Boards—find their resources taxed to the utmost in giving out relief. It will, therefore, be interesting, aud afTord food for the thoughtful, to learn what Mr Mill's plan is which he proposes for the purpose of relieving the deplorable state of things amongst the lower classes in the Old Country. He suggests that charity organisations or societies should be formed to try the experiment of industrial village farms on the pattern of those founded in Holland by General Vandenvosch. These communities arc now self-supporting, and are pronounced a complete success. Mr Mills proposes that a number of unemployed should be taken froin the overcrowded centres, such as London, and transferred to certain localities in the country where they should be formed into village farm colonics of about 400 or 300 acres each. The colonists should then be set to work upon the farm at such occupations as would be allotted to each and found most suitable for them. They would till and cultivate the land, growing the produce required for the wants of°thc village community, make their own clothes, boots, &c., and, a,s far as possible, provide all their own necessaries. There are, even in Great Britain and Ireland, tracts of waste and unoccupied land 3 that could be utilised in this manner by charity organisations. The experiment would be carried out at a comparatively small cost, and we are of the opinion that by some such plan as this, established on an extensive and perfectly comprehensive manner under proper supervision and management, that a panacea will be found to remove, in no small degree, the social difficulties which the increasing congestion of population is heaping upon the Mother Country and covering her with reproach. It would, at least, be a very economical and effectual method of dealing with the problem and of dispensing charity, and one which it would not be amiss to adopt in this country and thereby check the growing evils of pauperism.