THE NEW GOVERNOR

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1929, Page 8

THE NEW GOVERNOR

KEEN AGRICULTURIST. (Auckland “Star.”) Baron Bledisloe, who is to succeed Sir Charles Fergiisson as GovernorGeneral of New Zealand, is 62 years.of age. Ho comes out with a great reputation as an agriculturist and an administrator, and his great interest in the land makes his appointment to New Zealand singularly appropriate. Oddly enough he was to have piloted the party of British farmers who are coming out to tour New Zealand in the New Year, and as a matter off fact he had booked his passage on the Remuera. Apparently at that time the matter of successor to Sir Charles Fergusson had not been decided. It will be remembered that a few weeks ago it was rumoured that the appointment had been offered to Sir Lew Trenchard, the head of the Air Service at Home. The Baron is a son of the late Charles Bathurst, of Lydney Park, in the Forst of Dean, where the family has been living for 200 years. He was edu cated at Eton and Oxford. After leaving he was called to the bar in 1891 and practised as a Chancery barrister and conveyancer for 16 years. In 1910 lie was elected Conservative M.P. for S. Wilts and made a member off the Council of the Duchy of Lancaster. Meanwhile in the development of his Gloucestershire estate, Lydney Pain, he had made a close study of farming problems and in 1915 became president of the Central Chamber of Agriculture.

WAR SERVICE. In 1910 when ;i Ministry of Food was created to cope with tttie difficulties caused by the war in the maintenance of food supplies in Britain, he was appointed its Parliamentary Secretary. From 1917, when lie was knighted | (K.8.E.), until after the end of the war he was chairman of the Royal Commission on Sugar Supplies and Director of Sugar Distribution. In 1918 he was raised to the peerage and was afterwards president of the Math and West of England Dairy Farmers’ Association, the Central Landowners’ Association and the agricultural section- of Hie British Association, and chairman of the Farmers’ Club. In 1924 on the formation of the Baldwin Conservative Government he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture and shortly afterwards made a tour of Canada and the United States to study agricultural conditions there. One of the proposals that he put forward on his return was for the formation of a national park for the preservation of the wild life of the British countryside. The idea w'as not taken up then, but in 1929 after he was out of office owing to the replacement of the Baldwin Cabinet by that of MacDonald he revived it, making the definite suggestion that an area of 36 square miles in the Forest of Dean region of i Gloucestershire belonging to the Crown should be reserved for the purpose. He found ready sympathy and support from the Labour Government and in October, 1929, a committee was appointed to inquire into the proposal. SCIENTIFIC FARMER, Some Colonials are apt to think that all the English farmers are woefully behind the times, but the fact is that when the British farmer is up-to-date he is generally a couple of rows in front of the next best. Baron Bledisloe is an example of the scientific up-to-date farmer, who knows both theory and practice, and who is in the happy position of being able to finance his ambitious experimental schemes. The family estate in Gloucestershire is farm" ed on the most approved lines, and the Baron also has large holdings down in Wiltshire. His chief interests are in producing bacon, wheat, potatoes and *■ dairy produce. His pig-house built || on the Danish plan, is the largest in i England. It houses 750 pigs, and is a |j model of what such' a place should be; s in fact, many human beings are not | housed so hygienically. The Baron | keeps over 2000 pigs at a time to supj| ply his very up-to-date bacon-curing ::: plant. The use of electricity througli--1 out the pig-house is characteristic of | the whole equipment of the model farm the Baron maintains. In addition to 1 his interest in pigs, he is a keen dairj | farmer, dairying, by the way, being much more closely connected with pig--1 farming in the Old Country and on the j Continent than it is in New Zealand. !t The milking herds on the Bledisloe pro--9 perties are three of Shorthorns and one j of Red Polls. i j \ j KEEN CO-OPERATIONIST. * ! The new Governor-Gneeral has held ‘ I all the highest position in Britain as * | far as agriculture is concerned; no man I has a higher reputation of the business ! both theoretical and practical. His views 1 on agriculture, which lie has always aimed at making more of a science c than it is to-day, may be gauged from c a notable speech he delivered before tlie Agricultural Section of the British 1 I Association a few years back. He com- j ” 1 mentod strongly on the “blight of the , | middle-man,” and maintained that to 6 i co-operative methods agricultural land-1 v 1 owners must turn to enhance the well- , being of themselves and the whole ruri al community. He pointed out that the British agricultural landowner was on his trial, and prophesied that unless] ,ri he justified himself the nationalisation j s of the land was inevitable. It is quite I 1 evident that the Baron’s interest in . a New Zealand must have been stimulat-l ed when he knew that the co-operative J s principle was strong in the dairying in- p j dustry, in spite of many desperate at- b

tempts by interested parties to wreck it. LADY BLEDISLOE. Baron Bledisloe has been twice married. His first wilfo, to whom he was married in 1898, was the Hon. Bertha Lopes, hv whom he had two sons and one daughter. The heir to the title is now 30 years of age. His second wile is the Hon. Mrs T. C. Cooper-Smith, whose first husband died in 1926. Mrs Smith was the second daughter of the first and last Baron Glantawe, who was better known as Sir John Jones Jenkin She was married to M.r Smitlv in 1920. It is interesting to know that in 1927 the society papers at Home published a report that Baron Bledisloe was engaged to Countess Hardwicke, who was Miss Russell, daughter of the late Mr J. R. Russell, and was born in Auckland. Lady Bledisloe, like her father before her, is much interested in philanthropic work. She is still quite young, and is noted in English society for her good looks.