AIDED COLONISATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 996, 3 April 1891, Page 20

AIDED COLONISATION.

Every now and then some gifted speaker or brilliant writer in this Colony employs his voice or pen to urge the country to adopt some scheme of colonising the land by State-aided settlers. Model settlements in other parts of the world are held up as happy examples for us to imitate. The theory urged is that special blocks of land should be set apart for specially selected settlei’s, who should find homes prepared for them and employment found them on arrival, and then carefully dry-nursed until they have saved sufficient money to purchase right out the freehold of the land which they have been dumped upon. The theory is an ideal one—on paper; but in practice it generally turns out the very reverse of an ideal. Some time ago Lord Brassey grew wonderfully excited over this colonisation question, and he got elected president of the Canadian Co-operative Colonisation Company. This company was formed in 1889, and under the advice of Professor Tanner some 45,000 acres of land were purchased near Qu’Appelle station, on the Canadian Pacific Railway at an average cost, including buildings, of £1 8s per acre. When the land was properly secured the company invited applications from intending settlers selected from the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. From the first 100 applicants 25 practical agriculturists were selected. Each man bore an excellent character for ability and steadiness. The pioneer party sailed for Canada in April, 1890. They were to be paid wages of 24s per week for the six summer months and 18s per week for the six winter months with lodgings and rations free; and they were promised advances.to enable them to take up Government homesteads after the fifteen months’ engagement to the company had terminated. So far so good. Theoretically the scheme was a grand one. Here were farm hands who at •. home in Great Britain were well up in their business and received the current wages of the district, say 16s per week and a cottage on the estate, for which they paid Is or Is 6d per week, with use of a fair-sized garden, firewood, and other perquisites. The offer to these men of 24s per week for six months and 18s per week for the next six with board and lodging thrown in sounded like a fairy tale. It was a sudden jump from poverty to opulence, and no wonder they grasped the idea at once. Yisions of practically unlimited beef, beer and * baccy ’ floated across their minds, and no doubt they each echoed the words of Russell—- ‘ To the West, to the West, To the land of the free. Where a man is a man If he is willing to toil, And the humblest may gather The fruits of the soil.’ They landed and settled upon the land, and went to work with a will. But no sooner had they started work when a hitch occurred, a hitch probably which Lord Brassey had not considered fully in all its importance. The men at 24s a week and board soon found out that their labour in the harvest time was worth far more than that sum. They soon ‘jibbed ’ on their contract, and left the land and the patronising company and struck out for themselves Their services were in demand at much higher rates of wages than the company offered. So Lord Brassey and his fellow directors had to confess that their system of colonisation was not quite a success. State-aided colonisation is perhaps necessary when a new country is to he opened up, but there is no form of settlement so successful as that which is going on on the West Coast of the North Island. Free and independent selectors, with a little capital, willing hands and plenty of pluck and.energy, pushing ahead and hewing out a home for themselves in the primeval forest, are a far more desirable class of colonists than those who require to be drynursed for years, it may be by a paternal Government, and who, if everything is not rose-hued, turn round and bite the hand that feeds them.