LAND FOR SETTLEMENT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 14978, 26 April 1909, Page 2

LAND FOR SETTLEMENT.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir.—The news contained in yeeierday’s issue will indeed be pleasant reading to the landless of South Canterbury. As you say,, it will go to prove the Ward Government have not entirely dropped the land for settlement policy. Eut one swallow does not make a summer, and I am not yet convinced that the present Government is too sweet on land settlement. Or is it that our representatives, as you almost suggest, are neglecting to bring the needs of the province before the Prime Minister. It is now over a year since a petition containing over five hundred names was presented to the Minister for Lands, praying, the Government to acquire the Achray Estate in the Arnuri, and quite recently a number of landless-men: waited on the member for Hurunui, asking him to again put the matte i before the Premier. As one who has watched the land settlement policy from its infancy, ,1 can endorse all you have said as to it being the main remedy for the unemployed problem, for not only does every successful applicant get off tthe labour market, but he also becomes an employer almost immediately, and, instead of a station like Achray employing about six or seven hands, it would be making homes for something like twenty families. If settlement were not a success in the dis-tr-'ct wo could understand the Government being so slow, but when we sea the grain grown and the fat stock pro* duced, to say nothing of the robust,healthy children who are already there, one is inclined to think the Government have a special reason for leaving the district for the future without the benefits of the Land for Settlements Act.—l am, etc..

ANXIOUSLY WAITING-