Life on the Land

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 225, 15 October 1943, Page 3

Life on the Land

N an article in this issue the Director of Canterbury Agricultural College (Professor E. R. Hudson) not merely suggests, but says plainly, that New Zealand will slip socially and culturally if it detaches itself from the land. He does not of course say, or even suggest, that this has happened already. Far less does he say that those now on the land are not making a good use of it. His argument is that the rest of us are not making the farmer’s life as rich and full as it ought to be, that the good life is not the same thing at all as the economically successful life, and that no country can remain healthy unless a considerable proportion of its people live and work among living things. It is not a new theory or a revolutionary one, but he is right in saying that it is not as widely accepted as it must be if we are to avoid "physical, mental, and spiritual maladjustment." We are in fact maladjusted already, though not yet hopelessly so, and Professor Hudson’s remedy for this is (1) to make it easier for able young men to get on the land and (2) to make life more satisfying for them when they have succeeded in establishing themselves. A man may of ‘course live and work in the country without being a farmer: many men do, and some must. It would be ridiculous to draw a line between those who till the soil and those who work for them-doc-tors, teachers, storekeepers, and tradesmen. Professor Hudson does not do that. He does the very opposite of it-asks that more of all kinds should live in the country. But he asks also that they should be satisfied peoplepeople whose lives are made mentally interesting and emotionally wholesome and clean; and he} knows that it is a big and difficult request. But he argues that any other line of development will bring greater difficulties _ still; stresses and strains which will distort and exhaust us. ay