LAND MONOPOLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 234, 3 October 1928, Page 11

LAND MONOPOLY.

NEW ZEALAND'S PROBLEM.

WHY BOYS CANNOT BECOME FARMERS. HALF THE LAND HELD BY 3000 MEN. (By TOUCHSTONE.) Land settlement in** New Zealand to-day, as is well known, is practically at a standstill, and the Minister of Lands and other official spokesmen have freely declared that so far from putting new settlers on the land they will be well pleased if they manage to keep on it the men now there and struggling with the enormous deadweight of mortgages with which this country is afflicted. In view of the fact that New Zealand is larger in area than England, Wales and Scotland combined, and yet contains only a million and a-half people, this is surely a remarkable state of affairs. We have 14 people to the square mile, England and Wales have 050 to the square mile, and Scotland 165. Yet we are told land settlement is impossible in New Zealand except to people with substantial capital, and even then the prospects of getting an adequate return on that capital are not too iJright. Of the 66 million acres of land in New Zealand some 300,000 acres are boroughs and town districts, and in them already nearly two-thirds of our population are cooped up. The ordinary run of townspeople have next to no chance of getting their boys on the land as farmers on their own account, and on top of this there is a steady drift also of farmers' sons seeking openings in the towns, and seeking them largely through lack of openings in the country. Galloping Overhead Costs. It is not a healthy state of affairs. We have sunk an immense sum of borrowed money in opening up and developing the country by roads, railways, hydro-electric power plants, etc. To get an adequate return on that investment the country must be much more closely settled than at present. The official figures show that while the burden of taxes and rates increased between 1911 and 1926 by well over 200 per cent, the national production increased by only a little over 100 per cent. As near as one can calculate it the national overhead bill in taxes, rates, mortgage interest, and interest on bank advances rose from about £12,000,00 in 1911 to about £41,000,000 in 1927. In the same period the national production as shown in the official figtores increased from £52,000,000 to £116,000,000. In other words, to secure a £64,000,000 increase in production we have incurred an increase of somewhere about '£29,000,000 in overhead charges. It is difficult to believe that this development pan have been profitable, and the way farmers to-day are groaning under their mortgage burdens indicates that, although the figures are only very approximate owing to the defective way the mortgage statistics are compiled, they are nevertheless not so very far away from the truth. To get a return on the millions we are spending each year to develop New Zealand we must put more men on the land. What land have we on which we can put them? The official figures show that about 2,700,000 acres of Crown lands remain available for future settlement. Twenty years ago there was over 7,000,000 acres shown as so remaining, and 30 years ago about double that. This Crown land remaining to-day is mostly the fag-end of the once huge national estate, and is largely made up of remote, rugged and inaccessible country. ' This raises the question of whether the land in occupation is being used to the best advantage. Turning to the latest statistics, it will be found that the rural land in occupation totals 43 million acres, and* is held by 85,600 persons, employing 102,000 male workers, such workers including working proprietors and their families. On scrutinising the official figures a little more closely wt shall find that this 43 million acres is distributed as follows: — 19 million acres is occupied by 82,50 C persons, and gives employment tc 91,000 male workers. 24 million acres is occupied by 310( persons and gives employment t< 11,000.male workers. Furthermore, of this latter 24 millior acres, 1082 persons occupy 18 millioi acres and provide employment for less than 5000 male workers. As the Nortl Island is 28 million acres in area, il thus appears that the area held by 310( persons is equal to about six-sevenths of the entire island,'and about two thirds of this is held by 1082 persons If this is not land monopoly of the verj worst description what is? As Sir George Grey Saw It. This country has been afflicted witl the problem of land monopoly from tin start. Everybody who arrived in tin days of first settlement seemed infecte( ■with a desire to grab land. Nobody was better acquainted with* what went on ii the early colonisation of New Zealanc than Sir George Grey. Here is what h< said in Parliament about thie land situa tion in 1882: — "Let us look at New Zealand. Nom ■will deny that the best Crown land have been purchased in enormous blocks that these lands are held in fee simpl by very great and large proprietors in deed. The means by which they ac quired those lands I will not go into. . . But nevertheless they, in great part, go possession of those blocks in fee simpl by being either the legislators or th administrators of the law. . . . Let i list be placed on this table of great land owners and I will make my words good. Sir George Grey has been dead a lon time, but the great landowners are stil very much with us. The great land owners and their allies ran the Parlia ■meiit of New Zealand almost continu ously from the start right down to 189( in which year a great b6dv of fleece and bankrupted small farmers unite with the townspeople to throw thei into the wilderness and put the Ballanc Government in. For years th Ballance Government 'and itj successor: with varying success and varyin earnestness, waged war againtet tl monopolists. Then in 1912 the politics pendulum swung over, and amid muc eclat, and dressed up in a new name a the "Reform party," back into offic came the remnants of the old gang, lot of us thought it really was a r< formed party. But the events of tl past sixteen years have shown this- ws not so. History Repsats Itself. The two worst slumps in the histoi of New Zealand, the slump of' tl eighties and preser slump from whi( we are •utfering, both due to pr cisely th* same They are di to tlie public in! c 1 being subordii iitid by Tory Gov:-; r—.-nts,to the gre< n' '•■•■ downers. In l.o'li cases the utmo ) ' b?cn done to the progress j t; j , and misery and financi

ruin has been callously inflicted on thousands of innocent people. The story of how the selfishness of the great landowners wrecked New Zealand in the eighties can be learned by anyone who likes to ransack the literature of that period. It has been summarised many times. The Hon. W. Downie Stewart, at present Minister of Finance, has testified to it in magazine articles written years ago, and in the book on "State Socialism in New Zealand," of which he was joint author with Professor Le Rossignol in 1910. The story was told in Mr. Downie Stewart's articles in 1909 in the "Journal of Political Economy" on "Land Monopoly and Land Tenure in New Zealand," and this book is worth glancing at. In 1870, Vogel got Parliament to adopt his great Public Works scheme of railways, roads, immigration and loans. He proposed to borrow £10,000,000 over a period of ten years. Actually double that sum was borrowed in the time. Vogel, our authors relate, "suggested with great wisdom that the Crown lands be so administered by lease or sale, as to pay a large part of the cost of the roads and railways, and that a special tax be levied on the owners of lands specially benefited." This part of the scheme' was cut out. As Mr. Downie Stewart and the professeor put.it: "It was no mere coincidence that Parliament was at that time composed of landholders, among whom • the sheep-raisers of the South Island exercised a dominating influence." To quote another passage: "The landowners defeated this part of his scheme while accepting the part involving enormous borrowing fox railways and other public works which should add to the value of their lands without providing permanent occupation for the surplus population." The net result of this transaction was a wild land boom. Hundreds of thousands of acres, worth from fl to £3 per acre before the railways came, sold at fr<fm £10 to £20 per acre. Then in 1879 the prices of produce fell, and a depression set in that did not completely pass away for fourteen or fifteen years. In some districts three-fourths of the prominent colonists were ruined, and the Bank of New Zealand and the.Colonial Bank were in the ditch by the early nineties, while the old Loan and Mercantile Company crashed amid a scandal which necessitated the retirement from office . of an English Cabinet Minister. The extent of the disaster may be gauged from the fact that when the Bank o; New Zealand told the Government it must close its doors unless' it got' State aid, it was in possession of round-about 700,000 acres of rural, suburban, and town lands seized by it from its insolvent customers. Nothing Learnt from the Past. Such was the legacy left to New Zealand by a Government which in 1870 sacrificed the national interest to the greediness of a few. One would have thought that sorry spectacle would have stood a warning for all time. But, no. A bare half century later another colossal land boom is worked up by another , Government, immense* sums of 1 public money are poured into the pockets of landowners, and, q# before, the boom bursts, and misery and despair stalk through the land. At the same time Ministers of the Crown perambulate the country talking of the slump as if it were a visitation of God, a mysterious affliction arising from obscure causes in no way connected with themselves. But the story of how on pretext of rewarding its war-worn soldiers a New Zealand Government hung about their hecks the chains of slavery, and in the face of the , warnings of its officers tossed millions of public money into the laps of landowners for nothing—this story will have to be reserved if or another day. It is a 6tory , that cannot be forgotten by anyone who desires to see this country developed in s the interest of the people who inhabit s it, and not to see those people made the ; prey of moneylenders, and an enormous I share of the wealth we produce given to t a few persons who have done little or , nothing towards creating that wealth. J (To be continued.)