FLOCK HOUSE SCHEME

Taranaki Daily News, 7 November 1930, Page 9

FLOCK HOUSE SCHEME

GIRLS’ SECTION TO CLOSE. NO FURTHER DRAFTS COMING. The girls’ Flock House establishment, which has been conducted by the New Zealand sheepowners’ acknowledgment of debt to British seamen fund for a number of years, is to be closed and the property disposed of. In making this announcement the. trustees report that 128 girls have been brought tb New Zealand under the benefits of the fund, in addition to 575 boys. The training of the girls in domestic work and light farming duties has been carefully carried out and the closest care has been given to building up'a high moral standard of conduct. No further drafts of girls will arrive in New Zealand. The trustees report that in sympathy with the lower prices for wool, fat stock and butter-fat, the credit balance of the farm operations at Flock House this year was lower, but under the circumstances satisfactory. The area of pasture top-dressed was very considerably extended during the autumn and the result would show in the improved carrying capacity in the coming year. “Labour on farms and stations is most seriously needed at the present time, but financial considerations have greatly .limited the numbers which can be employed at the rates of payment, fixed in other directions,” states the report. “This has most particularly affected Some of the “older youths, who have become unsettled by the apparently high rates of wages offered for other forms of labour. Experience has shown that these high rates of daily wages, alternating with., periods of unemployment, are a delusion and invariably result in depleting to a vanishing point savings made while in farm employment.”

The progress of the very great majority of the young people, however, has been most encouraging. It is estimated that the personal assets of the Flock House boys and girls, in cash savings, life insurance-payments, horses, dogs and equipment, cannot be less, and is probably greater, than £45,000. Many of the older young men and women have their own post office savings bank accounts of substantial amounts. The amount held by the trustees in the Public Trust Office at the credit of the boys and girls’ savings accounts is £22,130. Life insurance premiums paid to date total £6938, the total amount of cover, excluding bonuses, being £122,094. In addition, the Public Trustee holds accumulated pension moneys to the credit of the boys and girls to a total of £6009. Numbers of the young people make weekly allotments from their wages to their widowed mothers in England. Thirteen Flock House girls and ten Flock House boys have married and settled in their own establishments. The trustees have had several unimproved aud partly improved largo areas of.laiid under consideration with a view to group settlement of the older youths, who have accumulated sufficient savings to enable them to make a start for themselves. As soon as an area of land that fills the requirements is acquired development will be energetically placed in -hand. At the same time, when any of the more experienced young men find for themselves small properties which can be farmed with success with the means at their disposal, the trustees intend to assist them.

During the . year grants totalling £lOOB were made from the fund to disabled sailors and to the dependents of sailors who were incapacitated or who died as the result of injuries received during the war. Since the establishment of the fund in 1921 a total of £58,557 has been so distributed, £26,200 in New Zealand and £32,357 in Great Britain. Loans, advanced to beneficiaries, totalled £2843, while the immigration, training and settlement of boy and girl dependants in New Zealand has cost £56,424.