PRODUCTION AND LAND VAULES.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2394, 25 February 1915, Page 7

PRODUCTION AND LAND VAULES.

Sir, —It is well we should be proud of <mf output this year ini wool, . butter, cheese, and mutton. The farmers have flutdone. themselves by £4,500,000 over the figures of 1913. They are indeed the Wkbone of the Country, and deserve all credit for it. But ivHle we rejoice with them, let us not forget there is another side to this question, and one too often, in the rush for mere material wealth, forgotten. During the last ten years £25,000,000 of community-created values in this' Country hare been pocketed by private individuals. Nothing of this' vast sum .has been returned to the community. Had there been a threepence in the £ tax only, the sum of £312;500 would have been reaped by the Treasury. One shilling in the £ would have produced no less a sum than one and a Quarter millions, and would have allowed for a large libato on Customs duties. But supposing in plaoe of this , that twenty years ago, when land values started to rise, we had had a land tax of 3d. in the £. Can. any economist deny that the price fo land would have been, at a.lower level than it. is, - while' an enormous sum, would have allowed for very substantial rebates; in Customs duties? . : , The price of land in New Zealand, especially of .rural'land,,is a reflection upon our land system, and a menace to the welfare .of th 6 community. Land takes; everything. If an agricultural, college is established whereby the farmer is taught te increase the productiveness of his land, or a railway or read is made, 1 or increased facilties are treated for facilitating the transit and sale of our piroduce in the Home market, 6r loans are grafted on easy and cheap terms by the State / to farmers—land takes the whole of the benefits thereby created. No one, except the landowner,is on whit the ebtter o£E. If it were otherwise'how do you account for the fact that after a record year for our farmers that the prioe of butter, cheese, meat, and farm - produce generally is higher than ever? How do you account for the fact that dairying land, up the West Coast is fetching up to £100 per acre ' and is likely to go still higher, 6r that when a bloc kof very average Government land is thrown, open there are hundreds of applicants for every section? Under a'sane land system, especiEilly in a young country like this, every man physically fit should be able ito acquire land. The country is crying but for settlers, and still more settlers. But large areas are, artificially locked up',- awaiting a purchaser at the speculator's price, or are running only sheep, where there should be happy families in hundreds, adding to its productivity and providxrtg future defenders of our Country. If a farmer purchases one of these high-_priced fartis, he has no time for improving his land; it takes him all his time,- by grinding out the lives of himself and his employees, to pay his interest.. ;

I say, when one looks, around and sees -what we have done in the last 50 years, and what we might have done, it should act ,as a healthy deterrent to these paeans for "record outputs." Had we had a sane land system from the beginning, schools, colleges ,and universities Would all'have been free to all. There was no need for any public debt to create roads and railways. The land values that we have handed over to private indiiyduals would have amply provided for them. And best of all the land, freed from the incubus Of private exploitation, would have been accessible to all for the purpose for which it was created, namely, use. What we most lack in New Zealand is idealism. We have set before ns as Our god tho gross fetish of materialism, before whose feet of clay all fall prostrate in admiration. Hence wealth alone counts, and worth is not considered. We are creating,' at the expense of the health and happiness 6f the community, and at the cost o fits exclusion from the priceless benefits of free air and soil, a moneyed aristocracy whose possessions are their sole recommendation. Let us rather set before us the ideal of a free people, owning the Boil they live on, slaves to no ' man, neither debauched by riches nor debased by poverty. We shall then have no fear for the future of New Zealand, nor for the day -when we must meet the enemy at the gate.—l am, etc., AGRICOLiL