ARTIFICIAL LAND VALUES.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2168, 5 June 1914, Page 9

ARTIFICIAL LAND VALUES.

Sir,—ln your sub-leader of- June 3,. concerning tho expenditure on military defence, you say "oven as necessary to New 'Zealand's defence as the; niairiten-: auce of military forces is the effective occupation of tho country. We need to double our citizen army, and the best way to do this is to double 'our population." . "Effective occupation of the country," is indeed absolutely necessary, but how can it be.effectively occupied when no one but-the rich can afford to buy land in this country ? With land at anything from.£2o to £8.0 pier acre, how docs the average inan stand a chance to buy it? We do need to double our population,., ct even treble it. But this can not be done by bringing out shiploads of hotel : ' servants, hawkers, unskilled labourers, clerks, tradesmen's assistants, and greengrocers, as is now being done. It may pay the shipping companies. It certainly doesn't pay us who are losing the best of our, native-born people, to make way for' wastrels, and paying for the subsidy. What is wanted is a land tax that will bring down tho artificiallyinflated values of land,-to something like a fair price, which will remove tho barriers now set up by the land monopolist to the thousands of native-born New Zealandefs who are leaving tho country because they can't get. land. Do this, and there will be no need to scour the back streets of London or Liverpool for so-called "farm servants" who don't know which end of a cow to sit down to. "Unlick the land and let the people in." Put aside, as worse than useless all immigration schemes. Do this, and you will not need, to call out for "effective occupation;" For the population problem will solve itself —I am,' etc., A. H. GIBSON. Ngaio. *