TIMBER ROYALTY.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 4 October 1901, Page 3

TIMBER ROYALTY.

{To the Editor). Sir, —I saw by an advertisement in last night’s Star that a meeting of the employees and sawmill men is called for Saturday afternoon, the sth inst. Might I suggest that they should make some representation to the Government on the question of Timber Royalties. It appears to me that a 50% duty on native timber is altogether too much, and while it may conduce toward conservening our timber, it certainly will not assist the industry from an employees point of view. This timber business is one that wants a little intelligence brought to bear on it. The present land laws of the colony, I believe, compel the settler to clear so many acres a year, and in some parts of the colony a great crop of blackened stumps proclaim that it has been carried out to the letter. Now at Is per 100 ft super Royalties, this means a loss to the colony of millions of money, as any amount of the cleared land in the North Island was worth, for Royalty alone, £‘lo per acre, and I suppose would average £5, What an immense sum this means, all gone up in smoko. I will leave this for some clerk in a Government office to figure out; it’s too big a contract for me. I think the employees meeting on Saturday may devote five minutes to this question, and they may be able to do some good for their fellow-man, if its only the man who has to buy the timber, and I think it will be admitted that our timber contributes very liberally to the revenue already, as the Government get at the present time not less than Is 6d per lOCft on all the timber cut on the West Coast that is exported, lam,— The Slabby.