The N.Z. Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY). SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1905. THE PUNISHMENT OF PIONEERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5731, 28 October 1905, Page 4

The N.Z. Times.

(PUBLISHED DAILY). SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1905. THE PUNISHMENT OF PIONEERS.

•TUB WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE “ WELLINGTON INDEPENDENT.” ESTABLISHED 1816*

The articles on back-blocks life in Taranaki ■which have been appearing in our columns during the past week have doubtless brought home to many city people for the first time the extraordinary conditions under which their country cousins are living. It is difficult to appreciate the fact that the people of whim our special commissioner has treated were in the majority of cases brought up either in cities or in the quiet comfort of country life; and that they, of their own free will, elected to forego the luxuries and the social pleasures of civilisation to take up the national responsibility of pioneering.

We do not for a moment assume that all the pioneers in our hack-blocks are labouring under the same disabilities. In many parts of New Zealand pioneering is, by reason of the natural conditions and the climate, a great deal less arduous. But the conditions described by our commissioner may be taken to bo those under which thousands of settlers are working to-day in the back country of our own district, that is, along the fringe .of bush stretching generally in a south-easterly direction from Taranaki. The hardships of the "back-blockers,” compared with the dwellers of the towns, may bo summarised as the triple want of access, amusement, and education. By taking up a section in such a place as the Ohura district under present conditions a man has everything to lose. He will lose money, not because his section is a bad one, but because during onethird of the year ho cannot got his produce to market. Ho will lose to a large extent the benefits of society and amusement—both. real needs of a civilis-.

ed man—for tie same reason, that bad roads lock him up a prisoner on his own selection. And finally, if he is the father of a family, his children will suffer the irreparable loss of a modern education, because the roads are foe bad to permit them to ride or bo driven to school. The almost incredible position in the district visited by our commissioner is that at this time of the year, throughout four hundred square miles of country having access by way of the Ohura Main road to Taranaki, there arc not five miles of road that are fit for wheel traffic. Yet this walled-in area of fertile country is inhabited by men, women and children, placed there under the Government settlement policy. There is no doubt that it is good country—so good that men have tenaciously clung to their holdings for ten years. It may be argued, of course, that the selectors went into the back-blocks voluntarily; but still, as the Land Commission has expressed it, “a solvent and flourishing colony cannot bo absolved from blame when it calls upon its pioneer settlers to carry out their life’s work under conditions mimical to the well-being, the happiness, and prosperity of themselves and their families.” Tin’s is a stern impeachment that we, as a people, cannot escape. The man who goes into the bush cannot, and does not, expect to enjoy tho same privileges and advantages as his friends in the settled country; hut he may reasonably expect to be provided with such reading as will permit him to make the best of his surroundings. He has a right to be provided with the means of getting his produce to market, and he has a paramount right to have education placed within tho reach of his children. Tho Ohura settler is denied both these rights simply because his roads, upon which a hundred thousand pounds have boon expended, are worse than no roads at all. There is a very strong argument hero in support of tho advice of some of our leading farmers to hasten slowly in tho matter of opening up our Crown lands, and to pay more attention to providing access before throwing settlers down in the bush to make what is surely irony to call a “living.” To exile a community like that of Ohura is a social crime; and by lack of communication to isolate such a great patch of splendid country is an economic blunder whoso effects tho colony will yet heavily feel. Having summed up the facts, wo purpose, at a later date, to deal with their beariug on tho duties of our administrators.