STATE FArMS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 17, Issue 17, 4 June 1895, Page 6

STATE FArMS.

— ■ — ♦ TO THE EDITOR. Sis,— ln your issue of 21st inst., I observe an article by "Nimrod," wherein he relates a conversation between himself and another person re State Farm principles. Such conversations are common in up -sountry towns on busy days. I would like to know if " Nimrod's " informant wore goggles, " Nimrod " commences by Baying : " From the little information gained by reading and through conversation with variona people, I was led to believe that the State Farm principle was a scheme promulgated as a solution of the unemployed problem," etc. New, "Nimrod" meets with a bystander who takes it upon himself to blast the characters of hardworking, respectable men . "Nimrod" drinks the evil draught which alterß his previous opinions, founded by reading and other conversations, until be fancies he has learned in one day, in Fortroae, what the Government of the colony has been for years trying to solve. Strong are the works of Satan 1 Bat I will pass over the sermon part of the conversation. Bystander seems to think that all sawmillers will be ruined by the Government helping the Battlers to start a co-operative sawmill in the Haldane settlement. Such a scheme has only been mooted, still the farseeing Bystander predicts ruination. F udge! ; Again, Bystander says the marketable value of all land in the colony will recede in sympathy with this wholesale free grant of the pick of the soil to inexperienced, penniless men. Now, I knew most of the settlers in the Haldane settlement— some of them for many years— and I feel confident that they are men well fitted to undertake the hardships and privations required of them to make comfortable homes for their families. Re the decrease in the value of land by the Government opening up the bush land : Has it not been the aim of the Government for many years to open up tbe bush land between the Molyneaux and Mataura rivers f The Highland crofters refused to come and settle on it : and now, because a few of our oldest colonists get a little assistance from the State, for which they give in return their hard work, we find uninterested people trying to throw cold water on their undertakings. — I am, etc., T. A. Tbumble.