UNIQUE EXPERIMENT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 25 January 1932, Page 4

UNIQUE EXPERIMENT.

This week will see the end of what, so far as New Zealand is concerned, has been a unique experiment, the congregating of a number of city boys in camp at Penrose with a view to their being influenced towards a career on the land. The need for something of the kind was seen many months ago by a number 'of far-seeing men, and the scheme was inaugurated. While all will deploxe the necessity for such a scheme, it will be readily recognised that the service given by the leaders of the movement will be of the -utmost benefit in many ways to the lads. The next logical move, in addition to assisting the lads to positions on farms, is the setting in motion of machinery which will give the lads a reasonably good opportunity of ultimately becoming farmers on their own account. If “hundreds of boys are to be trained with a view to a career on the land, and no real effort made for the acquiring of land on fife easiest of terms, it will be like making a plum pudding and forgetting to put in the plums. These lads at Penrose are starting- out on the most wonderful adventure of all —Life. They, like thousands more, possess none of the advantages of the boys whose parents are the fortunate possessors of a good share of this world’s goods. Their circumstance demand that they be out earning at a very early age. A study of the subject indices it clear that employment for boys must be looked for outside the large city areas. During the prosperous years of the last decade there was huge public and private expenditure in the cities. Even the least observant will have now realised that the drift should be in the direction of the country districts m order that the productivity of the land may be increased. The snending of a large share of public and private money m rural areas seems to be the policy best suited to a better distribution of population, and also to a practical solution or at least a lessening of unemployment among boys as well as adults.