"LURE OF THE TOWN"

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 1449, 3 October 1910, Page 6

"LURE OF THE TOWN"

TO KEEP YOUTH ON LAND.fi ————— • A WORLD-WIDE PROBLEM., Sir Carl aw Martin, chairman of tin Scottish Agricultural Commission, which/ is visiting Australia, referred in an interview in Sydney last week to the modern drift of population from the country to : town. "When you have people on the land," ; he said, "it is . your business to keep them there. Here we touch a world-wide problem. There are observable two contrary streams of tendency— making towards land settlement, and one citywards. This is a matter of concern to statesmen all over the world, to Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his Ministers at Ottawa, just as it is to Colonel Roosevelt, who has initiated something like a national policy by way of counteracting the cityward tendency. That tendency is clearly observable in Scotland and Ireland. This ought not to be. .The farmer's life is one of increasing and vital interest. The farmer keeps the keys of the granary of nature. The seasons come round for him; the . chemistry of the air and soil work for him, research, improvements in transportation, improvements in mechanism, add to the interest and to the value of his industry. He is in touch with the markets of the world is not an isolated person; he stands in the centre of things. The rooting of the people on the soil once you have them there is important, both to the rural parts and to the cities, because if the farmer requires large centres of population to purchase his products, the city requires for its welfare a great background of rural prosperity. How the problem is to be solved if it can, be solved at allis still a matter of perplexity. But it seems that we must oppose some more powerful attractions to the lure of the town. We must create some bias in the young person born on the land which will be strong enough to counteract the superficial glamours of the city. We must involve Mm in a mass of interests, social, economic, industrial, and commercial, so that it should be difficult, if : not impossible, for him to pull up his I stakes and flee citywards. All this points to a well-devised system of education which takes the youth at an early age, I and trains him in the elements and practice of agriculture along with a general educationnature study, school gardens, experimental stations all point that way."