During the early salvaging period no distribution to beneficiaries occurred on any scale. Moderate distributions started in 1924. Right through the twenties and thirties distribution continued to take second place to land development and debt repayment. Very useful educational grants were, however, paid out through an ‘education committee’ on which the blocks were represented. With the help of this committee the commissioner granted annual bursaries to children of beneficiaries attending secondary schools, training colleges and universities. He also made grants to churches and to needy beneficiaries. To those whose interests warranted this, he granted housing assistance. With the wool boom in the late forties very substantial sums were for the first time paid out to the owners. These were now very different from those who had first entered into a contract with the pakeha seventy years before. With the greater hope and prosperity brought by the present century their number had grown to no less than 8,000. In education, they were reaching equality with the European. Many had experience of running farms and stations on modern lines. In all aspects of life, they were anxious to run their own business and impatient of guardianship in any form. Nor did they regard a small interest in one of the East Coast trust blocks as a trivial matter; they had not lost their keen traditional sense of the great importance of the ownership of land. Naturally enough, many began to ask when their land, whose immense wealth had now become obvious, would be handed back to them. (to be continued in next issue) EAST COAST MAORI TRUST LANDS 30th JUNE 1953