LAND SPECULATION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1350, 30 January 1912, Page 9

LAND SPECULATION.

Sir,—The • brief paragraph in your Issue of January _24 to the ijFect that the Nukutawhiti Block of 13,000 acres, northof Wairoa, had just been pold at a profit of <£23,000, in addition to .£75,000 wortli of kauri . Teserved to the vendor, is an index of what is going on all over the Dominion. -Here is a profit of. nearly .£IOO,OOO pockfetod by the land speculator, for which presumably no value is given. .Near "Wangaaui land sold somo 15 years ago at J!8 per acre changed .hands the other day at =670. At Plimmerton land bought at .£9 is being sold at the rate of .£4OO per acrc. In each case no value is given for the additional pricc obtained. What a fearful burden we are laying on the shoulders of postority in nllowing this wholesale pocketing by. private speculators of the nation's assets! We are. condemning those nho must ultimately try to live off the land to life-long slavery in order to make interest on these huge values. To quote a recent writer: "There is no system of economics, politics, or ethics whereby it shall bo madejustor expedient to take that which you have not eahied . . . there can be no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get moro than he has 'earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about God's providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect and virtue!"—l am, etc., X. Ngaio, January 24.