Always a Job for Flock House Boys

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 268, 15 November 1934, Page 5

Always a Job for Flock House Boys

LAND SETTLEMENT SCHEME ‘‘lt is satisfactory to be"able to state authoritatively that, during the last four or live years of depressed conditions for tho farming community, no one of our young people, who has kept in touch with our welfare office, has been unable to obtain good farm employment,” comments the chairman of tho Boys’ Flock House trustees (MrE. Newman, C.M.G.) in his annual report. “During the past year the inquiry for our young people from satisfactory employers with whom wo would have liked to have placed boys has been very much greater than we were able to satisfy. There is every indication that this state of affairs will continue. Juno 28 last was tho tenth anniversary of the arrival in New Zealand of the first party of Flock Houso boys, followed two years later by the first party of Flock Houso girls, the forerunners of tho total of 763 overseas boys and girls trained at Flock House. These youngsters are now mostly mature men and women, thoroughly good New Zealanders, absorbed into the community. Nearly one hundred are married and over sixty are established on the land on their own account.

‘‘During tho year a further advance in settlement was mado by the purchase by trustees on behalf of twenty of our more experienced young men of a fine improved property of 2300 acres in the Waikato, which was taken over with stock and implements on June 1. Tho purchase was financed by the young men’s own savings, supplemented by a proportional subsidy granted by this fund in each case. During the first year the property is being farmed as a community settlement and the new settlers are also engaged in fencing and developing the separate farms which later will be occupied by the individuals comprised In the company. Tho future of this settlement is assured as tho young men have been able to enter into it on particularly .favourable terms in regard to the cost of land and stock, and the calibre of the settlers leaves nothing to bo desired. Tho trustees hope later to be able to assist further group settlements of this nature, as more of our young men attain maturity, competency and the necessary sufficient bank balances. “For every boy leaving Flock House at the end of his period of initial farm, training a satisfactory permanent position has been found on a farm or station, at fair rates of wages, with good living conditions and with opportunities for further advancement. The demand for these boys has been, hfi I have previously stated, greater than, we can supply, and it is to bo regretted that more New Zealand boys and their parents do not realise that the opportunities for an independent.. and prosperous future iu this Dominion are, and must always be, greater for the man on the land than in any other trade or profession. To the manly and virile type of boy farming and stock-raising will' always appeal, and developments in recent years have emphasised that a career on tho land is ono of absorbing interest to the keenest brains in the community. As his Excellency Lord Bledisloe recently stated in regard to grass-land farming: ‘Tho work achieved during the last twenty years has exceeded in commercial value that of the 2000 years which prcccdcd'them, and wo are as yet only on the first rung 1 of the ladder of knowledge.’

“There is, on the one hand, an unsatisfied and increasing demand for trained assistants from the farmers of the Dominion, and hundreds of thousands' of acres of undeveloped or only partially developed land, and we have here an organisation of proved ability to train suitable youths to fill the positions offering and to look after their welfare until' they are able to establish themselves on the land on their own account. It should hot bo difficult to devise some means by which these agencies for land settlement should work together."