Group Settlement Plans

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 306, 22 September 1934, Page 9

Group Settlement Plans

Sir, —In venturing to comment on Mr. McLauclilin’s letter on the above subject I wish to be regarded as a typical well-meaning, ill-instructed citizen—a I

sort of barometer recording the reactions of tlie average mind to the unemployment problem. In that capacity I grant that the social order is in grievous disorder. I look, not to possibilities of overseas markets, but to our Own efforts to put matters right. Mr. McLauchlin has given us a list of proposed remedies. Several of these: land nationalisation, State monetary control, national non-party government, etc.: have their own sponsors and advocates who hope to prove their efficacy in the near future. The average man, however, even if he be a landowner or a bank shareholder, is. not disturbed ; the public mind is not ripe for such changes. The case is different as regards the ]lan proposed by. Mr. McLauchlin in the name of Ins union, viz., group settlements plus suitable vocational training. That is something practical. If we are farmers we expect the Government to buy land at inflated prices, thus raising the value of our land. If are not, we suppose the settlements will be spoonfed for years by publie money, and we are prepared to grumble bitterly at the increased taxation. Such is the average reaction. But on the whole I hope we are decent enough to agree that something must be done to arrest this wasting disease of unemployment.

I am fair-minded enough to admit that group settlements are practicable, and intelligent enough to see that even a considerable expenditure of public money will be a sound investment (to put it on nd higher ground) if it brings willing and able but workless and prospectless men and women “back to the land.”—l am, etc., , . " RUS. Wellington, September 21.