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Hokitika Guardian, 13 September 1920, Page 2

As indicating how the folk are prepared to gamble in land dealing at a recent Farmers’ Union gathering, a delegate mentioned a case in his own , knowledge where a fourteenth mortgage had been effected on a farm. A glance at the records of mortgages registered during the last couple of years is staggering. Jn the year ended, March, 1919, the number was 19,489 , and the aggregate sum involved £l9,- . 007,286. In the following year 42,664 j mortgages were effected, the amount being £48,442,900. In the first three ‘months' the record was 14,118, for £17,119,493, or at the rate of 56,472 aggregating £68,477,972, per annum. In the month of June last .5560 mort- j gages were registered for £6,251,440, ! or at the rate of 66,720 and £75,017,280 J respectively per annum. Now all this means a "heavily-enlarged drain upon i the community for interest, a very | great deal of which goes into the pockets of speculators and people who have retired from the work of production to live in idleness, spend their war profits and directly aggravate the already dreadful inflation of prices of commodities. That the State purchase of land has been a principal factor in swelling this volume of speculation and inflation no sane person can doubt or deny. And now, after so much damage that was avoidable lias been done, we find the chairman of the Land Purchase Board again commenting upon the perilously high prices that are being paid for properties. It is most unfortunate that the new scheme of land taxation designed to burst up large estates, is not to be brought into immediate use. The measure is that of a Government which has learned by recent experience how unsafe and unsound is the present policy, and we are therefore surprised at the slowness of the remedy. We dislike exceedingly, says the Lyttelton Times the taking of a pessimistic view, but we cannot help dreading the results of the existing state of things in regard to farming and land .settlement when the inevitable fall in prices overtakes New Zealand.