OFF TO QUEENSLAND.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 818, 16 May 1910, Page 8

OFF TO QUEENSLAND.

(To the Editor.) Jir,—l desire to express my admiration of your fearlessness in publishing ■the splendid letter on the present land monopoly in New Zealand, which appeared in this morning's Dominion. I am the son of a British farmer who was jsqueezed to the wall by land monopoly in England, and twenty years ago I came 'out to New Zealand with my brothers. Three weeks hence, with my : wife and family, I am leaving' New Zealand to' settle in Queensland. I have three grown £ons, and I; see. no chance of setting them up on reasonable terms on pro-, .perties of their own in this Dominion. When I leave I shall be taking with me just JSIOO more' capital than I brought in with me twenty years ago. Certainly, in the meantime,. I have raised a family. I have . tried sheep-farming, dairying, and cropping. I have paid out practically nothing in wages, and at first did all my own work, with tho assistance of my brothers, and later on with the, help of my. sons. It has been the same story all along. Land is too dear, and land monopoly '■' and aggregation are going on all the time, and forcing the small men under. I don't think ?.nythiug truer and better was ever written on New {Zealand conditions than in your cortespondenfs letter. - ; '

• tip in the district from which I como if we grow crops we cannot sell them, save for a bit of wheat and chaff. I ■have ■ a hundred sacks of barley up there ;aow, >and. a great, shed full of. pressed) itay, but there is no demand for ,'either and I cannot get offers for them. The : merchants don't want them, and the ■people don't want them. I have sold my Jarm for cash, and to do so I have had .to take £2 an acre less than its market rvalue .two years ago. In the meantime :S have spent .£l5O on improvements on. 'fit. Larid is being sold in tho district j.by order of the mortgagee, and the bulk lot' the small men aro just simply hangting on by the skin of their teeth, and rtoping to pull through now that money ilas been getting a little easier. Those iwhd have enough sheep have had the. (high price of wool to tide them over, ibut it has been a hard time for the •others. There has been plenty of exchanging of farms going on, but when two men in a difficulty both "swop" 'lound, neither is likely' to bo much further ahead.

Straws show which way the wind blows. Look', at the shipment of draught horses Irom New Zealand to Australia. Draughts can be picked up at a discount here. Farmers have not got the work for them to do. Seventy went across to Sydney last week,: sixty this week, and so it goes on. 'I am taking a number across, myself. There, ia no difficulty'in picking them up in New Zealand. What is the position in Australia? Why, they simply cannot get enough, anything like enough, to open up the new country that ;is being broken in. Hero' all ia stagnation. There, there is life and activity, and crops can be sold and got rid of without difficulty. I see they are building fifty new steamers to meet tho big increases, in Australian trade. In New the Union Company still has steamers laid up. If your readers think I am exaggerat.jng the position, let them drop round to the hotels in the city, and listen to tho : conversation. Only last night I' was talking, to a. friend in a hotel sitting'.Toora about my intention to go to Ausitralia-,- when three strangers chipped in. 'These were farmers, and the three of them were also going across to Australia. They had been following the land 'ballots, , but foupd it useless putting in for them, and what land they could get outside was too dear for them to make a living on. The land inflation in New Zealand is of no benefit to the. farmer. If ho sells out he has to pay as much or more as he received to get going on a new property.,. The Government cheap money has been inflating land values steadily. People think they can get money so cheaply that they, go bidding against one another ,and pay absurd prices for their land. Who, for instance, would start his son dairying when' he- has to buy land on the basis of butter-fat remaining at elevenpence a pound? I entirely asree with your correspondent "X," that what is wanted, in New Zealand is the graduated land tax. Tho present' repurchase scheme of closer settlement has not relieved the position, but, on the contrary, as "X" points out so clearly, has only intensified it. Fisher, in Australia, is committed to tho graduated tax, and when that comes I' think things will go ahead there very quickly. These, sir, are the experiences of a farmer forced out of England by land monopoly, and who now. after twenty years.- leaves New Zealand to escape tho same evil; and givo his sons tho start in life they cannot obtain hero. In this letter I have disclosed a good deal of my privato business, and I am concealing my identity under a nom de. plume, bnt if any of your readers doubt the facts please give them my name and address, which I enclose.—l am, etc., FARMER. May U, 1910. 'A meeting was held at Coromandel, Auckland, last Monday evening, when it was decided to proceed with tho formation of a company for the purpose of erecting a dairy factory in Coromandel., At a meeting of tho provisional directors it was decided to form a co-opera-tive company with a capital of £3000, divided into 3000 shares, to be allotted to suppliers only, pro iata.