Land Settlement Hopes The Daily Telegraph, which has a way
of being well- informed in such matters, foreshadows the announcement by the Government of an extensive scheme of group land-settlement, involving the transfer of anything up to 18,000 families from the distressed areas to thinly populated rural districts -where suitable land can be made available. This would confirm the hint thrown out in the Prime Minister's New Year broadcast address, and so far' as can be seen from the details given it would seem that the scheme is to follow very much the " land- colony " model described by Sir Daniel Hall in a recent issue of The Spectator. Everything depends -on whether such colonies •can, in fact, be made self-supporting after a year or two. It is useless to take men who have failed (through no fault of their own) in the cities and put them where they will fail in the country. But the experimental schemes carried out by the Society of Friends do suggest that in favourable circumstances the thing can be done. And if it can be it certainly should be. The estimated cost, £750 per settler, is not excessive if for that a. man and his family can be made self-supporting in, say, a couple of years. With sinking fund it would mean a charge of well under £40 a year—a great deal less than unemployment pay for .a family of four or five.
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