SMALL HOLDINGS AT HOME

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2478, 17 April 1909, Page 2

SMALL HOLDINGS AT HOME

A PICTURE OF CONTENTMENT. The Small Holdings Movement is imperceptibly but certainly reviving one of the best sentiments, namely, that there is no place like home, especially when it is all your own. The latest land hunger has seized the imagination of the poor agriculturists. It is not the hunger' of the land-bragger or speculator. It is not inspired by the craving for “property.” It is produced by the magnetism of a new idealism. City life has, unfortunately, its alluring and poisonous attractions to the ruralist; but it is gradually dawning upon large numbers of people who foolishly migrated from the country to the town, as well as among those who are tempted to forsake the solitude of the village for the racket of the city, that life on the land need no longer be a drudge, but a pleasure, no longer one long-drawn span of semi-slavery, but a happy and healthy environment; no longer work work, work, with only “the House” at the end of the vista; it may be a. sound and successful investment for the energies of the body, mind and soul. Many forces contribute to this revival, such as the early morning paper, the telephone, the bicycle, cheap express and exursion trains, motor cars, and the steadily multiplying outlets for recreation, social intercourse and amusement, and last, out by no means laest, the Small Holdings Movement. HOPE IN THE v ILLAGE. That movement is backed by financial possibilities. It provides the chance for the small capitalists. No man in the possession of average agricultural experience need wait till he is within sight of the pension age before he can acquire, With his life’s savings, a hit of land. For a small sum of money he can embai'k on a small holding, which, in course of time, he will be ablo to call his very own, and will to his children, in sure and certain hope chat they will perpetuate his name and amprovo upon his labors. The well-paid artisan father of a group of boys and girls in the city sends them to technical schools and Chambers of Commerce and Society of Arts examin at ions. Poor Hodge has long felt the sold steel in his soul as lie lias pondered upon the contrast; but with a small holding of twenty to fifty acres nowadays the steel is being extracted. The advantages of the position will soon be on his side. For he lias made a discovery . He has discovered that the principles which have made other branches of industry into huge paying organisations can be applied to the industry of the spade and the plough. His eyes have been opened to the pois'er and money-making worth of co-opera-tion. He used to plow, sow, and reap* and sell his produce alone, but he found himself landless' and homeless. But now!—two small farmers, working in Unity and for a given purpose, are better than one, and twenty better still than two. The unit can be strengthened by the experience of the whole. One cart can carry to market daily the output of twenty small farmers, and this, with organisation, lightens the heart and braces the nerves of the new occupier of a small farm. Then he has acquired the knowledge that science of recent years has taught hiuii The viand was intemh\:l, and with extra labor, arrangement and foresight can easily be made, to produce four crops a - year where only one was reared in the days of as-it-was-in-the-heginning is now and ever shall be! Even the timid have little to dread. All around him experiments are being made which he can copy where successful and eschew where they fail. If he is slow to adopt new methods, new machinery, his county association will quicken his sluggish disposition. If he. is tortured by that other tear, of bad harvests and loss of stock, be will be invited to slay it by the pajunent of a ill insurance premium. PROSPERITY.

Hence the small holder of 1909 sees ahead more than a living. He sees a home and a banking account. Visit him of an evening, and listen to his review, as he neatly folds up his morning paper, knocks the ashes from his meerschaum, adds a chunk of wood to the ■mammoth fire, and exclaims, It s all brainy twaddle to say that England is losing ground—-England is waking up. Fifteen years ago the valley yondei was without habitation. Now there aie 400 families on it, 100 of them digging one-third of the food they need on the hillside. Sixty per cent., of them are in the co-operative society, and about an. equal number have a yellow-back. pass-, book that they ta'lce weekly to the postoffice. Did you see the the children in their playground? Their very laughter, -is a cure for pessimism, and their rosy cheeks one of the real ornaments of the society. • *-= ■■ “Then there’s me, with my little farm of forty acres, with that- long row of cows you saw as you stepped over the turnip fields. The eldest lad there lie ig—getting ready for the technical school, after a hard day in the open. The wife looks none the worse for her four hours at butter-making, and the girl’s pictures show that her fingers are .got spoiled by her work in the cowshed. “Last week I ran un town on some business, but mighty glad was I to get back to the lanes without lights and the fields without motor cars. But don’t run away with the notion that we are civilised hermits here. Oh, dear no. The pmcli of poverty is removed, and where there is prosperity there is And it is the promotion of this optimism, founded on a lovc< lor and the proper cultivation of the land, that is behind the launching of such schemes as that announced by Earl Carrington recently. . , • “An Englishman’s Home. is his castle, and when it is fortified by health and happiness and Content as impregnable. •