Land Settlement
A persistent high rate of unemployment and a. falling export trade have led to a general conviction that the land is not at present populated and used to the fullest advantage. Something has been done, and much more will be done, to- wards land settlement. The methods, perhaps, are not so important as certain considerations governing them. First, colonization and all that the word implies both socially and economically, is important. It is useless to put down a half-dozen families in isolation and expect them to be either happy or prosperous. A colony of one hundred families will succeed where the six fail. They will constitute a group sufficiently large to develop strong community interests socially, and to build up the co-operative trading society which alone can put them economically on level terms with larger proprietors. Another governing consideration has to be faced ; land settlement in England will have to be something of the nature of pioneering, just as it is in the new countries. Amenities must be sacrificed in the beginning for eventual stability.
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