PRIVATE SETTLEMENT SCHEMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 6

PRIVATE SETTLEMENT SCHEMES.

The announcement that the trustees of the Auckland Savings Bank will help land settlement and unemployment relief, in the same actions, with two handsome sums of money, is good news. These gifts arc in keeping with the custom the Bank has established of applying surplus to community ends, and they are an example in initiative and enterprise that should give a lead to the country. In this depression there has been too much leaning on the Government, and it is refreshing to find private enterprise planning such schemes as are the subjects of these Savings Bank grants. The first grant is of £10,000 —conditional on another £10,000 being raised by the public— for a settlement plan framed by a number of Waikato farmers for the placing of unemployed on the land, and the second begins with £2000 for the purchase of land for the | training and settling of unemployed boys, and proceeds to the spending of up to £20,000 during five years. It is proposed, under the Waikato scheme, that small farms be provided complete for suitable men, and the community basis- of settlement, which has been much talked about but never tried in this country, will be introduced. The experiment will be of great importance to the whole Dominion, and every effort should be made to ensure its success. The value of the provision for training boys for land work and settling them is obvious. It is a practical move for which the community should be grateful. The trustees of the Auckland Savings Banks are to be congratulated on their far-sighted patriotic action.