British Farmers and New Zealand Farms. TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 1653, 28 July 1883, Page 14

British Farmers and New Zealand Farms. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, — I should be very glad if your able contributor Mr Jenner would give his opinion of a scheme for settlement of English farmers on New Zealand farms which Mr W. A. Low (the well-known sheepfarmer, of this Island) and I prepared during a recent visit to the Old Home. We saw that the great need of small capitalists was ( some means by which they could exist without sinking their capital for the first two or three years. To meet this we suggested the formation of a company to be called the "Farmers' Colonial Emigration and Land Company." With the capital we proposed purchasing estates in New Zealand with a large proportion of leaseholds to them. The leaseholds, as sheep runs, we proposed to hold conjointly — i.e., supposing there were, say 100,000 acres of leasehold pastoral land, with 50,000 sheep, we would have it worked as a whole by the settlement. Here we saw an immediate source of income for our settlers. The freehold land would be taken up according to their means for homesteads. The fleeces of 50,000 sheep would bring in some £7000 a year net profit, which would give the 20 or 25 settlers a decent subsistence after all outgoing expenses had been deducted. Our proposed mode of dealing with the farmer-shareholder was as follows : — Assuming him to have a capital of £2500, with £1000 he would buy of the company from 200 to 500 acres, according to soil and locality, the remaining £1500 he would invest in shares. On the security of his titledeeds and shares the company would advance £1000 to build his homestead, &c. Here, then, we considered we had got our settler fairly under weigh, As a shareholder he draws from the sheep-run enough to keep him above want while he is getting his farm into working order.

There may be weak points in this scheme, but I really fail to see them, and I wish Mr Low had tried the experiment on his Amuri Ebtate, which was sold the other day. The proportions of leasehold and freehold there were just suited to the case. I have a growing distrust of companies where the dividends have all to be squeezed out of the producer. They appear to me to involve all the oppressions of the rack-renting systems of the Old World. No scheme of settlement is worth considering which does not aim, as its supreme object, at the welfare of the settler. The high dividends which most companies plume themselves on lire usually only so much money taken out of the toiler's pocket. I want to see some hundreds of our hard-pressed British agriculturists at work out here amid these superb climatic advantages, but I do not want to see them toiling and moiling from year's end to year's end in order that half a score of fortunate speculators may luxuriate in Belgravian mausions. I was pointed to a couple of New Zealand knights in London one day who were getting a couple of thousand ?ounds a year each aa " directois' " fees ! As see the toilworn settlers on their lone farms, and witness their struggles to pay off the mortgage, I am constrained to " look on this picture and on that," and draw my own conclusions. Surely the despised cockatoo's time for consideration has pretty well arrived. — I am, &c, Arthur Clayden. Nelson, July 19.