CITY COUNCILS AS LAND AGENTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 94, 18 October 1909, Page 2

CITY COUNCILS AS LAND AGENTS.

XO THE • EDITOR. Sir,— The English Small Holdings Aol allows pubho bodies to acquire land inside or outside the city boundaries to bo cut up and sold to workers on easy terms. Those sections can vary .from 3 to 50 acres. The money to buy this land is found by the Government, and the various public bodies act as trustees. For instance, if the Wellington City Council deoided to buy three hundred 1 , aores on tho east side of the Hutt Valley, to settle one hundred frjnilies, each on three-aore holdings, under the English Aot the State would find the money, pay it over to the City Council, which would act as agent for the Government. I think that if the Ward Government (instead of helping groups of poor men under the new Finance Bill to get land) empowered, as in England, every public body in" New Zealand to_ borrow money to buy land to cut up into small holdings, I venture to assert hundreds of strong men, who, when loan moneyp of public bodies are expended, are workless, would mako a living on these holdings near our towns. If the Aot is a suocess in England it should bo a suoco.oa here. — I am, eto., YEOMAN. Wellington, 15th October, 1909.