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New Zealand Mail, Issue 777, 21 January 1887, Page 23

Thebe is no end to the schemes for providing for the unemployed, but none of them can he said to show a way out of whar has become a very serious difficulty. The latest is one propounded by a Mr Edward Cooke at a meeting of unemployed men in Auckland. He proposes that men should be settled on 100 acre farms, and that the Government should advance money for buildings and improvement of the laud, and even for the maintenance of the settlers. At the end of five years they are to begin to repay the money at the rate of lob a week, and these payments are to last for thirteen years. Doubtless such a plan would work pleasantly enough for the settlers so long as they were receiving the loans, whether in lump sums or in weekly payments, but the trouble would come when the repayment began. The plan of course is absurd on the face of it, and it is not worth while to go into any details to show its absurdity. No Parliament or Government in the world is at all likely to advance large sums of money without a scrap of security or guarantee for its proper expenditure. Such a scheme as that proposed by Mr Cooke, if carried out, would give a rare opportunity to the idle and incapable to live at the public expense for five years. The fact is that in the great majority of cases the men who fail to find employment in New Zealand are utterly unfit for the occupation of farmers. It is a mistaken, though very common belief, that the mere ownership or even occupancy of 100 or 200 acres of land ensures a livelihood. People who have lived all their days in towns very frequently believe that they themselves could farm if they tried, and their remedy when work is scarce is to set men who know nothing of country work to a business which is absolutely new to them, which is full of risks, and which requires both experience and capital. It is surprising what nonsense men of the highest position and ability talk on this subject. Cardinal Manning quite recently gravely talked of relieving the great manufacturing towns in the United Elingdom of their superabundant population by settling the people on small farms in the colonies. He said very truly that there were in all the great colonies millions and millions of acres of unoccupied land fit to carry a countless population, but his inference that people who had passed their lives in factories could . make homes and farms for themselves in the wilds was quite wrong. There are few countries where the land will yield its fruits without both labour and skill, and in most a living has almost to be torn from it. Happily in New Zealand there are a large number of independent small landholders, but even their life is a hard one. They have to work early and late, and to turn their wits to making profit in all directions. The beat training for a small farmer is to work for some one else for a good many years, and it will generally be found that those who are doing best on their own land are men who have saved enough from their wages to make a start for themselves. An industrious

married man with a growing family, and with some money and experience, makes the best small farmer. If his sons are content to stay with him after they grow up, and that instead of receiving money their wages should be the improvement of the property of the family, success is certain. Even under these most favourable conditions, though there is a wholesome independent life without any pinching, there must be constant hard work and attention to business.. If people who know tlieir business, and are placed in favourable circumstances for carrying it on, have to strain every nerve to succeed, it is only to be expected that those who are quite ignorant of it should utterly fail. There may be exceptions, but, speaking generally, there cannot be the smallest doubt that the people for whom the Government has had to provide employment, if settled on farms, would fail to earn a living. The mere fact that they sire out of work is presumptive evidence that they are less energetic and capable than those who do find employment; and when it takes all the energy ot the most capable of those who know the business well to thrive at farming, it is not to be expected that the least capable of those who do nob know the business should succeed.