BACK TO THE LAND

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21050, 29 December 1933, Page 6

BACK TO THE LAND

TO THK EDITOH 07 THE PRE-*"). Sir,—ln his very helpful criticism in "The Press" of Saturday of my last "Back t,o the Land" letters, "Kaye Hoe" evidently approves of such a policy, provided it keeps step with forward movements in a scheme of "national organisation." My scheme goes much further. It anticipates and stimulates an urban industrial revival by the creation of a now, vigorous, rural life that extracts most of its food and a great part of its necessities, probably 50 per cent., from the soil. Just as the men in "camp" on the Lewis Pass road grow on a few upland sunny slopes vegetables and potatoes to supplement their meagre wages, so the same men on better land could grow more, produce more, make more goods, and therefore share more profits. The Lewis Pass, or Charteris Bay, or Sumner roads, once made, will not grow wheat, oats, or potatoes, but will be a perpetual charge on the country for maintenance, and the workers will be seeking another job; whereas on my proposed industrialised group farms, not only would the workers find constant employment, but the capital invested could return, and should return, a fair rate of interest, so that a new source of revenue would be tapped for the city, or province, or State. If little Denmark can finance her small-hold farmers at a rate of 3 or 4 per cent., surely spacious New Zealand could afford £1,000,000 a year from her pile of £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 of levies, taxes, and supertaxes. "Kaye Hoe" has little faith in the small farm scheme. Like the small business, the small farm can, to a limited extent, flourish, but we need the large, industrialised, intenselyfarmed co-operative farm to bring agriculture and rural life into line with the industrial growth of our towns. Otherwise wo shall be copying America, growing upward into skyscrapers instead of expanding widely, rurally. Prison labour is more usefully employed planting trees than picking oakum in the old-time gaols. On my proposed industrialised farms afforestation would keep pace with agriculture, as a matter of necessity. On the small farm arboriculture has little room. One farm as large ns Paparua, worked by free labour, with a share in the profits as wages, would be the finger pointing to the only solution of the unemployed problem. Of course, such a farm must not be over-manned, must not be made a dumping ground for massed unemployment; but honest free labour, superior to prison labour, would share the profits of the 1000 Corriedales and the 400 acres of lucerne, to say nothing of poultry, pigs, vegetables, dairy produce, and more important still, the manufactured goods made by the co-operators in their economised systemntiscd time. — Yours, etc.. F. .T. ALLEY. December 28, 1933.