RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUE.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 42, 17 August 1895, Page 2

RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAE, Sir,— Mr West, no douht, meets with some farmers who are highly improved and who would be benefited by Mr Ward's Bill, hut that does not make it a fact that it would fall justly on all settlers. I have already shown how the tax would fall heavier on the poorer settler than on the wealthier one. Let me ask my readers to turn their attention to our towns. Let us take two suppositious cases, A and B. A, who is a laborer, owns and occupies a quarteracre section in a back street, fenced, two roomed shanty. B is a brewer owning and occupying adjoining quarter acre. Fenced, six-roomed house, sheds, stables, brewery, etc., etc. Now see the injustice. A and B would pay the same rates, although A costs the borough very little for repairs of roads, culverts, etc., whereas Bs drays cut up the roads and put the ratepayers to considerable'expense to repair the same. Of course the brewer would be delighted to escape so easily, and would laugh at the laborer for supporting a Government that promises to do so much for the working men, but who, in passing laws founded on Socialistic fads and fallacies, impose heavier burdens upon the workers. I have said in a previous letter that the parrot cry, "By exempting improvements of taxation you encourage industry aud relieve the labor market," is all bunkum. In this colony, before we had this Socialistic legislation, the well-to-i do people in various parts of the colony I erected solid and costly buildings, business as well as private, e.g., Oamaru, Dunedin, and^Christchurch. Trade was brisk, money plentiful, and -wages high. Now trade is dull, money scarce, and wages going down, and I am sorry to say I think will go lower unless we get a better set of men in the House of Representatives, wbo, instead of legislating against capital will encourage capitalists in England to invest their money in our deep level gold mines, coal mines, iron sand deposits, etc., etc. Again, look at the costly buildings, warehouses, shops, mansions, ancl palaces, erected in England long before the world ever heard of Mr Henry George, who, by-the-way, now tbat he bas made .£150,000 by his books, no longer wants to gee his theories carried out so far as his property is concerned. ' While our legislators nave been forcing laws— founded on Socialistic fads ancl theories — on us, our exports since 1891 have steadily declined in value, and in 1594 were more than half -a -million less than 1891. This is no mere assertion on my part. It is a fact and can be verified by anyone turning up the statistics, as all my assertions can, for I never make an assertion without having proof, or proofs, at my back. I am, etc., George Wilks. Feilding, August 16fch, 1595. P.S. -I am willing to meet the Hon. Mr Ward, or any supporter of the Ministry in the House, to discuss not only their " Rating on Unimproved Valuo Bill," but the whole of their Socialistic measures, iv the Colyton Hall or elsewhere, but I must decline the honor of meeting only Mr West.— G.W.