VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS.
TO THE EDITOR.
g lßj —i have to thank you most sincerely for the very full, clear and graphic report of my conversation with your representative on Saturday week. As a whole the report is the most accurate I can remember, speaking from an experience of many interviews and interviewers. The two or three slips which I note are no doubt entirely due to the short time at our disposal, and the speed with which I was consequently obliged to speak. I now ask leave to trespass on your courtesy while I correct them. (1) It was not the Argus but the South Australian Register which published the surprising statement that New Zealand had lost 1700 on the arrivals and departures of November. The Argus' assertions about our loss of population were general. (2) The record of human beings lately put on the soil in South Australia is not " between five and six thousand in a few months/' but that number in three years. They are made up of 1157 homestead " blockers," representing between 3000 and 4000 souls, and the population of" 2000 correctly stated by you as being in the Murray Co-operative Settlements.
These last mentioned have literally been placed on the soil within a few months, but the remarkable increase in the number of "blockers" is spread over the period between the middle of 1891 and the middle of 1894.
(3) In speaking of the coupons used by the settlers in the co-operative associations, I should have said 15s instead of 10s 6d. I had no opportunity of referring to my notes either before or during our conversation, and that is my excuse for misleading you on this point. Permit me to add that I quite agree with the general tenor of your leading article of Monday as to there being a lesson of hope to be learned from village settlements in Australia.
If I don't take as high an estimate as you of the promising figures in Victoria and New South,Wales, on,the other hand there are the older homestead settlements in South Australia previous to 1891 to be taken into account, so that it is as broad as it is long, and your argument holds good. —I am, &c,
W. P. Beeves,
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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1193, 11 January 1895, Page 33
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377VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS. New Zealand Mail, Issue 1193, 11 January 1895, Page 33
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