The Real Way to Promote Settlement

Evening Star, Issue 8529, 30 May 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Real Way to Promote Settlement

The secret of Peilding is twofold. There is the system of settlement offered, and there is the system on which the settler works. The systeffl is to road the blocks before opening the land for sale, to offer the freehold on deferred payments without any interest or payments of any kind for three years, and to provide work at good wages. The men who were brought out by the Corporation have in a large number of j instances done well. Capital ? There is a case well known of one new arrival with a family who, when he was landed on his block, had just twenty shillings in his pocket. To-day he' owng 'T&is forty acres, haying paid' LS an acre for it j he delights m garden (flower and vegetable), house, orchard, and he is independent of the world. This man began life in the Old Country as a farm laborer. We may add that one of his boob who came out with him anrl Vgin li f e with him on his septjon is now tL~ ov}i,9r of a £QQ-acre farm. There are other pases ot men who have been equally successful, They have had to work hard, to exercise thrift, and to cultivate enterprise. But they have shown that easy terms of purchase and partial employmeat will enable men without any means At all to become freeholders of the soil, Independent oolonists, producers of wealth, and employers ot labor. That is the result of the twofold secret of Feilding, which has j made such a reoord in the census returns.'— '«New Zealand Tiroes.',