72 LAND SETTLEMENT & EDUCATION 



(where lucerne took the place of grass), which 

 yielded its tenant last year a net income of two 

 hundred pounds. Of course, the men have to work 

 hard, but then they are their own masters, and 

 within certain limits imposed by the seasons able 

 to arrange the work to their own liking.^ 



Speaking from a fairly wide experience, I am 

 convinced that our ex-Service men can earn a fair 

 living and lead a wholesome and interesting life on 

 the land, but I will once more emphasise this point 

 that they must be placed on the land under right 

 conditions, otherwise many of them will fail, and 

 a grave injustice will be done to those men who 

 have fought so splendidly for the Nation and have 

 so strong a claim upon us. 



***** 



In answering the question—" What is the best 

 size of Colony," — we must bear in mind that our 

 object is to have a settlement which will secure 

 all the social and economic advantages which arise 

 from close settlement. To achieve this we must 

 have a colony large enough and strong enough to 

 have a Credit Bank, to organise motor transport 

 and co-operative marketing, to employ a first-class 

 organising instructor, with perhaps one or two 

 assistants in special subjects — in fact to do all those 

 things for the absence of which many small holders 

 have gone under, and for the presence of which 



' I well remember a man who had three acres near Evesham 

 saying to me that formerly he was a road-mender under the 

 District Council ; that he had more or less to work in all sorts 

 of weather, and was getting crippled with rheumatism, but since 

 he had had his three-acre fruit and vegetable holding his health 

 had improved wonderfully, because in bad weather he could 

 always find enough work to do under the shelter of his shed. 

 This man estimated his earnings at an equivalent of thirty 

 shillings a week in cash. 



