A CRY FOR LAND.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XV, Issue 4088, 14 November 1911, Page 5

A CRY FOR LAND.

WOMAN’S HARD STRUGGLE

In the course of his address at Alasterton last evening Air A. W. Hogg quoted the following letter whicU he had received from the very heart of the Forty-Mile Bush: “Dear Sir, —Re large families, 1 am quite sure you will leel with me. 1 would like you to bring it under the Premier’s notice. The working man with a large family is surely deserving of notice and help, and with all the land available don’t you think he should be helped? 1 will just tell you how I am with a family of nine, three girls and six boys, and the eldest not sixteen years old. Aly husband works on the Gisborne-Motu railway. It takes half his wages to keep him and I get the other half to keep eight children and myself, which is an impossibility. That is the encouragement 1 get with a large family. Do try and do what you can to help the man with a family on to the land, lielx> the home team first before the stranger. Aly husband is very often ili, and loses a lot of time, and 1 don’t know how 1 am to bring up the family; but on the land it would be easy. Aly ease is the simple truth, and I am sure women that saw how 1 am compelled to pinch and screw to live would not think of having a family at all. 1 beg of you to do your best in our interests.”

Air Hogg said the letter showed that after all our land legislation we had entirely failed to meet the case of the landless worker. Were this man and his wife and family fourfooted quadrupeds they would be placed in a fattening paddock, but because they were human beings dependent on a labourer’s wage, they were left on the verge of starvation. People who were prepared to go on the land and rear a family, as the woman whose letter he read should have no difficulty in getting the material for a homestead.