LAND AND LABOUR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 506, 13 November 1909, Page 4

LAND AND LABOUR.

At the present time the country is ringing with cries of “Land for settlement; open up our back blocks.” Ai the same time we are told this is purely a farmer’s question, and that the Land Question is no concern of working men. Well, every working man must have something to do with land, each one of us must have a place to live in, and to us flaxworkers the question is not only one of our housing, but also of our wages. A little time age we were inundated with cries of a dying industry: to read some of the remarks of the wiseall —knowing gentlemen, who wrote on the industry, each of us working men were doing so well that a motor car was no longer a luxury to a flaxmill employee, and 100 guinea pianos were as common as mosquitos in a flaxcutter’s camp. When this cry was traced to its source, we found one of two things: a miller either had to pay heavy royalties on his green leaf or he had bought flax land on values based on the boom values of a few years ago. In either case the cause of his trouble was land monopoly. Of course the land values or royalties did not concern you, your duty was to save the industry. You had to let the price be taken out of your hide. No one else must suffer. Your proper course was to let your wages fall, work longer hours, let your wives and children suffer, or if you happened to be a single man, cut down and do away with those few luxuries that makes a man’s existence a little better than any working bullock. Your leaders, who advised you against this were “agitators,” “men fattening on working men, leading you to your ruin.”

Now have not each one of us an interest in the Land Question ? The cry for the sale of such land as has yet been left to the Government, concerns us as vitally. A few years ago a flax swamp was owned by a semi - government institution, and came into private hands, and anyone in flax knows its subsequent history. That flax swamp has been the direct means of raising the milling royalty charges all over the Dominion, and here I want you to understand that every £ your employer has to pay out in other charges means a £ less for a wage fund. The- history of this one swamp, is the history of New Zealand in a nutshell. The Government has permitted vast areas of this country to pass into private hands, money has been, borrowed, roads and railways built out of these loans, and in consequence land values have risen, and we, who have to earn our living by the sweat of our brows, have had to pay the price. The burden is already heavy. Are you going to make it heavier by allowing the rest of the Government land, which should be kept for the benefit of all, to drift into private hands, to become either a speculator’s gambling counter, or a lever to exact from you and those who follow you, an undue proportion of your earnings. You are told, of course, that farmers- will not farm the leasehold as well as freehold and English farmers of old are quoted as an instance. The English farmers at no time owned the lands they farmed and they leased them from the big territorial landlords. Now, the State can and will give a better tenure than any private person. England and Victoria are two conspicuous instances of freehold holdings and in both agriculture is going back. Most of you have a desire sooner or later to have a little home of your own. Which is the better for you, a fair leasehold from the Government, or paying either an exorbitant price or crushing rents from a private individual ?

Land nationalisation, of course, should be the aim of every intelligent working man, but, that is as yet an ideal to be worked for. Right here we can do much to relieve the pressure of land monopoly. Use your effective weapons, your Votes. Insist that no fresh sales of the Governm.ent land, your property, is allowed ’ see that land bears a proper proportion of the taxation of the Dominion, that while every encouragement is given to a man who does use the land, that all pressure will be brought to bear on those who merely hold the land and by their mere possession levy a toll on all around.