"THE LANDLESS."

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 397, 20 September 1911, Page 7

"THE LANDLESS."

Unfortunately the New Zealand Times very much understates the gravity of the posit ; on when it says that mure than four-fifths of the Dominion are landless. It might safely have put the proportion down at eleven-twelfths, even after excluding the 24,000 or 25,000 people who occupy holdings between one acre and ten acres in extent. The last official return shows that in 1909 there were 75,152 holdings in the Dominion, including Crown leaseholds, and not all of these, of course, were occupied by separate persons. But even if we assume that there are now 80,000 tenants and freeholders occupying holdings of one acre and over in extent, we are still left with the melancholy fact that there are some 950,000 men, women and children in the country without any direct interest in the soil. Mr Massey and his friends have a comforting little theory that when the 75,000 landholders die their estates will be divided among their children, and that by this means the face of the country will be gradually dotted with prosperous homesteads. But as more than half the holdings are under 100 acres in extent we are not very hopeful ourselves of seeing the theory put into practice. The probability is that one member of the family will succeed to the 100 acre farm, and that the others will drift into the towns or spend their days as agricultural labourers. It- is the thirty million acres of land that are occupied in larger areas than a square mile that must solve the problem that is exercising our contemporary, as it is exercising every other thoughtful observer, and it is the plain duty of the Government to see that this land is made available to the earth-hungry people. —Lyttelton Times.