SALVATION ARMY WORKS TO STEM DRIFT TO TOWNS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18186, 20 June 1927, Page 6

SALVATION ARMY WORKS TO STEM DRIFT TO TOWNS.

(Special to the “ Star.”) AUCKLAND, June 19. A vigorous and promising effort to stem the drift from country to town and to establish a counter movement back from the town to the country is being made by the Salvation Army on the Boys' Training Farm near Putaruru. The farm is a block of 20(30 acres, about eight and a half miles from Putaruru. When Major C. G. Fitness, who has been in charge of the farm, first went there, it was quite untouched, and not even fenced in. lie lived there in a tent for eighteen months before he had a place to which he could take his wife and children. To-day the position is entirely changed. Seven hundred acres have been brought under cultivation, and the buildings on the property include two homes, one for eighty-five and the other for fortyfive boys, a school and a teacher’s residence, a manager’s residence, dairy manager’s residence, farm officer’s residence, new sheds, store, stables, two cowsheds and slaughter-house. All is lit by electric power from Horahora, and there are eleven and a half miles of fencing on the estate. The purpose of the training farm is to take boys who have lost one or both of their parents and give them schooling and teach them farming. The idea is to get them away from the environment of the city and bring up the class of boy that is so urgently needed in the country. The need for provision for immigrants began to appear early in the history of the farm, and a home was erected with accommodation for fortyfive boys from Britain. There are fortyone in residence at present. The home for New Zealand orphan boys is about a mile distant, and has room for eightyfive. There is a herd of 120 cattle for the home boys to attend to, and they are taught how to milk and how to use milking machines. They are also instructed in ploughing and the use of farm implements generally. The orphan boys, who are much younger on the average, have twenty cows to attend to. Boys trained on the farm are always in great demand, and, though young New Zealanders are usually preferred, there is no difficulty in placing those from Home as soon as they are ready to go ouij to farms. A considerable number of boys are already most happily settled in different parts of the North Island, and Major Fitness has received many letters from employers expressing the greatest satisfaction with the lads. Boys from Scotland are the ones most greatly in demand. The Salvation Army has an “ aftercare ’’ officer, whose duty it is to visit boys who have been placed from the farm and their employers at least twice a year. This is sometimes most necessary. One farmer, for instance, expected a boy to sleep on the floor without a bed until strong representations were made to him.