The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, April 11, 1891. IRRIGATION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 593, 11 April 1891, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, April 11, 1891. IRRIGATION.

Be iust and font not; Let all the ends then aim’st at be thy country’s. Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Like many other progressive things that have been unduly puffed up, the great schemes of irrigation are proving to be of much less value than was proclaimed by the great flourish with which such works were first undertaken in Victoria. To the speculator, who gets hold of a bit of barren land and then “ booms ” its price by loud talk of what is to be done in the way of irrigation, and how he intends to transform the wilderness into a beautiful garden, it has been of great service. By the purchase of a few centrifugal pumps, and the cutting of a few water channels, miserable land that a person would hardly care to be called the owner of, suddenly leapt up in value to £2O or so an acre, and soon there set in what has been called the “ irrigation mania.” New Zealand was to be given a cold corner in the shade, her exports to Australia were soon to cease, and the sister colonies were then to assert a womanly independence of our favored colony. Little straws are beginning to show the direction of the current, and the exaggerated eulogies that were passed upon the system of irrigation, with the glowing accounts that were at short intervals supplied from America, are gradually being given a very low placff’in the estimation of their value We do not of course say that irrigation has not been a great blessing to Australia, for truly it has made prolific thousands of acres that had previously been idoked upon as useless. But it was never fit to be put to the use that knowing speculators have taken advantage of it for. It is now openly acknowledged that much of the land taken for irrigation is quite unsuited for the purpose. Recently twelve owners of land (9,800 acres) within the area of one trust applied that it be excised from the trust, as the land was not suitable for the purpose. The Minister of Lands agreed that irrigation was not of the slightest use to the land, but as it was part of the security given for an expenditure already, amounting to £1 70,000 (by the trust) he did not see how he could do anything in the matter; the department, he added, was pressing the trust for payments It seems now that the bills are not being met, and it is stated pressure for payment will bring about a national calamity, it being necessary that the State must make substantial modifications in its claims before they can be brought within the means of the farmers It will be with no sense of gratification that New Zealand farmers will learn of this weakening faith in the value of irrigation, although it was expected that it would to a great extent deprive this colony of an outlet for its produce. If a few of the speculators who have been doing so much in the way of booming things had been severely bitten, their misfortune would have been contemplated with an unaffected complacency, but when hard-working farmers are made the victims of these booms our sympathies must be with them. Irrigation is a most effectual means of turning some areas of land to good account, but there is no justification for a mania, or speculators’ boom, which can only, as it now appears to have been doing, result in loss to many industrious men who well deserve success. Unfortunately it seems to be the outcome of many useful schemes that they must first be the foundation for speculators to make big incomes from.