ISOLATED SETTLERS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXXIII, Issue 18, 18 July 1924, Page 5

ISOLATED SETTLERS

WHANGAMOMONA CONDITIONS. FARMS DESERTED. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, July 17. According to a deputation which waited on the Minister for Lands (the Hon. A. D. McLeod) this evening, fanners in the Whangamomona district are walking off their farms. Mr R. Masters, M.P. for Stratford, wlio introduced the deputation, said the deputation had come in support of matters upon which the Crown tenants of Whangamomona recently petitioned the Minister. They suggested that an inquiry be instituted to investigate the disabilities of the settlers, and that the body of the inquiry should be similar to the soldiers’ revaluation board or that board itself. They asked for a remission rent or of ; interest for a term of years, and spepial consideration for settlors on certain roads; whose position was desperate. Whangamomona was a genuine backblock county of Taranaki, and one that called,, for generous consideration in view of the present circumstances of the settlersthe conditions which the people lived, and the difficutlies, under, which they laboured to get their produce out ana their supplies in. If there was any* thing the Minister could do to. help the settlers to remain on their farms, he would he doing a service to the poopla “I say that with a full sense of responsibility,” said Mr Masters, ‘‘because they are going off,” Mr G. Stockwell, a settler, said the state of affairs was such that they would have to consider what steps were to bo taken if they were to conimio as producers. This was the reason for the petition which had been sent to tlie Minister. Anything from 17,000 to 20,000 acres of land had been abandoned of late. This was due to conditions, pressing on them so rarer that there was nothing left to them to do but to roll up and go. This would not be so bad if others wefo taking their places but there was a more serious aspect. Others found they would have to follow suit. The movement was outward alp the time, and they felt that the whole county was going to be set back if something was not clone to remedy the present state of affairs. The trouble was that the country needed to be in the hands of men of capital, and 80 per cent, of the settlers had gone in with; insufficient money and the country had beaten them.

”1 have had 24 yeajr s of- it,” Mr Stockwell said. “I have swagged in to the place and out to the place, and there Was,a time when my wifei never spoke to another woman for six months.” Things improved, but now they found that with the settlers leaving they were going back into the old state of isolation. To ask human beings to live under these conditions was expecting too much. It could not go on.

The Minister: “Have many of those areas been freehold?”

Mr StockwelJ; “No; mostly Crown.’’ The Minister; “Was there much changed hands at the time of the boom P” Mir L_|tockwell; “No.’’ The Minister: “What is your opinion] of the areas ?”

Mr Stockwell; “Too small. They want to be bigger and the man with the capital to come in.”

The Minister said it was a very difficult tiling to give a decision straight away. He would move in the matter as soon as it was possible for him to get hold of a suitable man to made the investigation. He had made up his mind to have a report on the conditions existing in this district. As regards tlxT matter of rent and interest, that would have to stand over for the report. Remissions were being made to civilian and soldier settlers every day.’ He had always held that, where there was a danger d: .land on which public money had been spent going back into its native state, or, worse" into noxious weeds, he would sooner see people on the land and the State getting no revenue.

Mr Maste s said the Minister's reply was very satisfactory indeed.