CLOSER SETTLEMENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 255, 28 October 1936, Page 6

CLOSER SETTLEMENT

Sir, —For remarkably obvious considerations, Mr. Siddells in your issue of 22nd. inst., has shown a distinct preference for heaping odium on the writer’s anonymity, rather than on putting some sort of feasible face on nis closer settlement dream. It is descending to an unusually low level of deleate, to assume that the writer prefers to “see the wives and families starving in the cities.” It has been suggested that such schemes show a profit only on account of the unpaid labour of wives and families. So long as Mr. Siddells can “get them on the land” and “get Wanganui on the map again,” he is completely aloof as to how the wives and families must struggle and work for their food, so long as he is assured ifiat they are fed! If this ready-made remedy for putting Wanganui on the map is a selfish taking advantage of man’s ill-advised (in New Zealand) yearning for his own piece of land and is unconcerned about the social equity and justice for those providing the remedy, then hypocrisy is a moderate word. ft has been suggested that Hamilton and Palmerston North owe their position to conditions flavoured with such tendencies. If Mr. Siddells is sincere in his advocacy for closer settlement, let him inform us as to what percentage of such farmers coming within the scope of his so far undefined ideal farming unit, have appeared before the Mortgagor Relief Court and kindred relief legislation. If such small farms preponderate, how could he assure their future success? Henry Ford “on American problems,” is hopefully trotted out as an annihilating reply to criticism—justifi-

able criticism —of a sugested New Zealand remedy. Would Mr. Siddells declare that U.S.A, and New Zealand problems were completely parallel—and why? He envisages his Utopia as “man with one foot in the factory and the other foot in the land” ana fortifies his confidence in such remedies being a success in New Zealand, by quoting learned authorities dispensing economic remedies for countries vastly different from New Zealand. New Zealand “is” different and the reason why New Zealand “is” in the cart, is because Mr. Siddells is not alone in his allegiance to economic philosophies founded on and dispensed for other countries. It's only inviting ridicule to reply to plain questions of vital and fundamental importance to such a scheme, to quote meaningless platitudes such as: “As for over-production we have never yet had a sufficient production of all the things which a family needs.” Presumably, still not enough butterfat! It has been suggested that such a scheme is based on butterfat and it has also been suggested that such butterfat would be produced partly by unfair child labour. Let Mr. Siddells face up to that question and deal in solid details and not just vague generalities. Let Mr. Siddells prove his scheme a financial success based on something less than a “140 hour week. If he can do so, he has our support; if he cannot, he is only wasting our time.—l am, etc., “TRY ANOTHER, REMEDY.”