There are in all some 400 sections, ranging in area from about 150 to 200 acres, and situated in close continuity to the Main Trunk line, in the Auckland, Taranaki, and Wellington land districts.
The Under-secretary of Lands (Mr W. C. Kensington), who is at present in Auckland, informed a Herald representative yesterday that this is the first occasion on which the act governing the improved farm settlement principle, which was passed in 1894, has been put into operation on such a large scale.
The land was purchased from the Natives, and it is, for the most part, first class land, and it is being opened chiefly for the benefit of landless men, married men having the preference.
Selectors will have the option of taking up their sections on the occupation-with-the-right-of-purchase system, or the renewable lease tenure.
The regulations make provision for advances by the Government to the holders to assist in making necessary improvements.
Amongst the men for whom these small areas are considered to be specially suitable are the retrenched civil servants and the workers who have lately been discharged from the Main Trunk railway works.
The men taking up the sections will also be given an opportunity later on of being employed by the Government in making the roads to their sections, and of their earning some ready money.
• A matter brought up at a recent meeting of the Dunedin and Suburban School Committees' Association was the early rising and long working hours of some schoolboys, whose progress at school was found to suffer in consequence.
One local schoolmaster had found that some of his boys rose at 3.30am in order to deliver papers and milk, and as a natural consequence were tired at school.
Discussion upon the matter was impossible last evening owing to the time being monopolised by the subject of the simplification of the school syllabus; but the president (Mr R. H. Todd), in his remarks, said he considered they could do nothing as an association, as they had no jurisdiction, save to give publicity to the facts and rouse the attention of parents to the subject. - ODT, 21.9.1909.
