348 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



settlers themselves see the wisdom of being provident. In 

 the Maulden settlement seventeen of the eighteen settlers 

 took advantage of the option given them, to pay a higher 

 rate of sinking fund than was strictly required under the 

 scheme, during the first twenty years, in order to get the 

 financial collar work as quickly as possible off their necks, and 

 also to make the burden fall as much as possible upon 

 their own shoulders and save their children's withers. In 

 consideration of that they are afterwards allowed to pay 

 less than the normal rate. No one will want to quarrel 

 with this arrangement, which suits both parties. But 

 it cannot be insisted upon by the vendor. 



The experiment instituted has made it quite clear that 

 so long as the vendor's interest is safeguarded, it is the best 

 policy to make things easy for qualified settlers. You want 

 people to settle. You select them — as we must now assume, 

 on the ground of their fitness. You see that their holding 

 is all that it should be. Both the human and the physical 

 material being equal to the charge laid upon them, it is 

 for you to further settlement by appropriate provision in 

 finance. We have in previous legislation adopted hard 

 and fast precepts which, instead of encouraging would-be 

 settlers, have in truth frightened them off. Lord Chaphn 

 had required twenty per cent, of money down. Our Public 

 Works finance is troublesome and cumbrous. The Prussian 

 authorities examine each case upon its own merits and 

 make allowance accordingly. In deserving cases they are 

 liberal. There is no fixed rule. However, I am advised that 

 under certain conditions considerable concessions are made. 

 The case of Polish settlers who receive the full remaining 

 fourth of the purchase price on personal security from their 

 co-operative banks has already been mentioned. That gives 

 them considerably more latitude in the use of their own 

 working capital, upon the sufficient presence of which every- 

 thing depends. The same resource is of course open to 

 people of other nationalities, who are members of co-opera- 

 tive credit societies and have good personal ^credit. It 

 is on a par with what is done in housing by the General 

 Savings Bank of Belgium, a very deserving institution, 



