READY-MADE FRUIT FARMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14808, 11 October 1911, Page 5

READY-MADE FRUIT FARMS.

UTILISING, PRISON LABOUR.

SIR JOHN FINDLAY'S SCHEME.

In the course of his speech in St. Mark's Hall, Remuera, last night, Sir John Findlay said he had been so .impressed with the fruit-growing possibilities of the North Island that he had advocated/the planting of 10,000-acre blocks in fruit trees by prison labour every five years, cutting the area up, at the expiration of that period into 50-acre fruit farms and dairy pastures. He advocated that prison labour should be employed; in doing this instead of in purely afforestation work .in othev parts. Fruitgrowers, however, had got the idea that what he proposed was prison labour fruitfarming. Nothing could be more ridiculous. The opposition given by the fruitgrowers, nevertheless, .proved so strong throughout the Dominion that he was' unable to carry his proposal into effect, but he had not' yet given up , hope of seeing his policy in actual working operation. By the employment of waste prison labour in such a scheme they would be able to provide these farms at such a low rate that the fruit-farmer would find no difficulty in making them pay. ■ 1 He instanced what had been done at Waerenga. There, lie said, in a few years, what had been a miserable desert land had been converted into a magnificent fruit farm. (A voice: "But what . did it cost?") It cost £6000. If they could do that at Waerenga what could they not do in the North and in the South of Auckland within a few years? He did not see why, with the development of the North of Auckland and the South of Auckland in fruit-growing, we should not. soon be independent of Tasmania or any other fruitgrowing country, and fruit which in New Zealand at present was a forbidden luxury to the working man would form one of the principal items in his everyday diet.* '"~i "'■■