FARMING FOR BOYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20930, 21 July 1931, Page 10

FARMING FOR BOYS.

SUGGESTED INCENTIVE.

ENCOURAGEMENT BY STATE.

[BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

NEW PLYMOUTH, Monday

A suggestion that the Government might provide boys with an incentive to take up farming by placing them on land of their own after they had attended agricultural classes and served a period of training with farmers, was made by Mr. A. E. Ansel! at a Reform Party rally at Inglewood on Saturday. The speaker said the difficulty of obtaining employment for boys was accentuated just now by the depression, but lie considered that for many years sufficient attention had not been given to this matter. He thought there wero plenty of farmers who were prepared to take these "boys, but unfortunately many of them could not afford to pay wages at present. Consequently he suggested that the Unemployment Board could very profitably allocate some money for expenditure in this direction, if only to provide each boy with a few shillings a week. The scheme of encouragement advocated by Mr. Ansell was that after a boy had gone through agricultural classes and had spent two or three years' training with a farmer, if he then showed ability and a desiro to go on the land, bis sacrifice of some years in acquiring his practical and theoretical knowledge should be sufficient security to warrant the Government in putting him on a place of his own.

" I do not think there is anything impracticable about it," concluded Mr. Ansell, " and it would be an incentive to boys to go through with their training."