FIFTY YEARS AGO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22193, 21 August 1935, Page 8

FIFTY YEARS AGO

PEOPLING THE COUNTRY Fears that the cities and towns of New Zealand would grow at the expense of the country districts were being expressed half a century ago. 8 ' the experience of overseas countries as an example, the New ZsauM> Herald of August 21, 1880, said. "The extraordinary number ot vas* cities is characteristic ot the acre. Monster cities may be in divers wavs a burden to their respective countries. It is not 11. good thing to have robust peasants transformed into rickety factory hands and delicatelunged townsmen —to have a na grow up less and less in the fresh air of the fields and more and more m tne vitiated physical and moral atmosphere of the crowded cities. "Sometimes the situation of a town makes its growth inevitable. Melbourne could not but become a large city, auu (lie same could be said of Sydney, w New Zealand there are yet no great towns, but Auckland, by and by, » likely to become so. The Panama tana will help to bring it about. It is oil fault, however, if the rural balance 0 not in good time provided. "In a climate that would allow tn husbandman 011 a little farm of ft ! te acres, by his own labour, and that 0 his family, to raise the high-paying crops, and not only with 20 tunes til cash reward but with infinitely less tw and hardship than are at present stowed 011 raising the cheap crops, man of 11s now living would see the plam and valleys of this island thickly an prosperously peopled. TVhen will t Government take measures to show t people how these pursuits are to be e tered on?"