25 NOVEMBER 1899, Page 11

THE SETTLEMENT OF RESERVISTS ON THE LAND.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] think every one must cordially sympathise with you in your desire (Spectator, November 18th) to see some portion of our South African territories, old or new, made available, after the war, for the settlement of Reservists. Perhaps I may be permitted, as an old Colonist, to draw attention to some of the difficulties that surround the project, and to give my conception of the only possible line of action by which they can be surmounted. It is quite idle to think that by surveying off 100 acre or 200 acre blocks, even of excellent land, but unroaded and unprepared for settlement in any way, and by granting them to our old soldiers, most of them unused to farming life anywhere, we shall be able to con- vert them into settlers. This was what was done, as I remember, by the Government of New Zealand after the Poverty Bay massacre in 1868. The land granted was of the very best quality, and was within ten miles of a port. I doubt whether any of it could now be bought for £30 an acre ; but it all, or very nearly all, within six months after it was allotted, had passed out of the hands of the military settlers. The business people of the neighbouring township soon had the bulk of it. "Put rigid restrictions on its alienability for several years," it will be said; and no doubt that would be desirable. That alone, however, will amount to little. Putting on such restrictions has been the one idea that has guided the various Colonial Governments in their dealings with the land ques- tion. They have thought that they have only to sell their blocks on deferred payments, postponing the grant of a free- hold title during some years, in order to bring them under permanent occupation by bona-fide settlers. Unless, however, under special conditions, the systems inspired by that idea have resulted in failure. In Australia vast areas of 320 acre blocks, sold on conditional purchase, have been consolidated into 10,000 or 50,000 acre blocks. New Zealand has the same story to tell ; and even in the cases where a successful settle- ment can be pointed to it would be found, for the most part, on inquiry, that none of the settlers to whom the land was originally allocated are now living upon it. The truth appears to be that our system of Colonial popular Governments, how- ever admirable, or, at any rate, however inevitable it may be, is not an ideal one for grappling with the land settlement problem. Suppose the land is, in the first instance. rendered inalienable for a term of years, who is to maintain this inalienability ? The men to whom it is granted will themselves have votes, and will vote for the candidate who promises to get the restrictions on its alienability relaxed. No other Member of the local Parlia- ment will have any interest in opposing him, and the relaxa- tion will probably sooner or later take effect. Even if it does not, there are ordinarily innumerable methods in which such restrictions can be evaded. Any form of the laisser-faire principle is, in Vile highest degree, inapplicable to land settle- ment. It can only be successfully carried out by a Govern- ment like the Government of India, widely removed from the control of popular impulses. Whatever may be the constitu- tion framed for the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, after the war, the lands which it is proposed to grant to the Reservists should certainly be retained in the hands of the Imperial authorities. The problem is, on the face of it, not a simple one,—how to settle an inexperienced man, practically without capital, on a block of waste land, and to put him into the way of making a living out of it. It must be remembered that during the first year of his occupation he will make nothing at all oat of it, and probably during the second very little. The settlements in New Zealand that have been successful, in the sense both that the settlers are now pro- sperous, and that they are the original settlers, may be counted on the fingers of one hand. Any of them that I know of have been settlements in the forest districts. It might seem that it would be easier to begin life on open land; but, for one thing, any open land that ever is available is always very remote from markets ; for another, the forest, at any rate, gives the settler material for his house, his firewood; and his fencing, in return for his labour, which all cost money, and very likely a good deal of money, on remote open land. Another condition which the successful settlements have fulfitled has been that the settlers have bad the oppor- tunity of spending a large part of their time in working for wages during the first years of their life in the bush. It is quite obvious, indeed, that a man without capital cannot settle on waste land, unless he has a chance of earning a living during the period that must intervene until such labour as he can devote to his own land in his spare time will make it productive; and it will be an indispensable condition to the success of any settlement system in Africa that wage-paid employment should be provided for the settlers during the early years of their occupation. How is this to be done ? We may make up our minds at once that a considerable initial outlay will have to be incurred. No system of settlement can possibly be successful without it. The outlay, however, need not be all, perhaps not any of it, a dead loss. Wherever a new block is laid off roads will have to be made to it and through it, and it may be taken as certain that a block of land divided into sections, and with roads opening up each section, will be worth a great deal more than the same block unroaded. Experience, I think, shows that the money spent on the roading of land is ordinarily returned two or three fold in the value added to it. Possibly it might be desirable to go further, and to construct not only roads, but fences and buildings as well, out of an initial advance. Scientific management on sound economic lines is the one thing necessary to success. It seems possible also that the principle of the Raffeisen banks might be brought into operation with success in connection with the settlement. It is a remarkable fact that, though the business world has found that it is impossible to lend a shilling with safety to one man without capital, standing isolated, if you take twenty of the same penniless units, and let them form themselves into a borrowing corporation—an agricultural bank as they call it on the Continent—then it becomes possible to lend very considerable sums with almost perfect safety to each of them. It is, we know, through the agency of these agricultural banks that, both in Germany and in Northern Italy, a great population has been settled on the land, and the same agency may perhaps be made to solve some of the problems that will face us in South Africa.—I