CLOSER SETTLEMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1415, 24 June 1915, Page 2

CLOSER SETTLEMENT.

Referring to this district’s prosperity at the opening of the Winter Show at Palmerston N. on Tuesday, the Premier, Hon. Mr Massey said, “we had had a very successful season. In other parts of the Dominion there had been a drought, but in this district the farmers had had a particularly good time. Notwithstanding the dry season, however, the Dominion’s exports had gone up by over ,£4,000,000, and the advance in three years had been £5,000,000. The country was prosperous and its prosperity depended almost solely on the increase in exports, 87 per cent of which came from the land. The moral from such a state of affairs was that we should do our utmost to increase exports by closer settlement and improving the productivity of the land.” The last sentence we desire to stress and this fact should not be lost sight of when the question of acquiring laud for settlement in this locality comes before the Laud Purchase Board. We have within a few miles o( Foxtou, roughly, six thousand acres of fertile country ripe for settlement. As held at present it is not yielding a hundredth part of what it would if closely settled. The unearned increment of this land now runs into thousands of pounds of which the State gets back comparatively nothing. If such private monopoly is allowed to continue, in the future, Foxtou will be in a worse position than at present. After what the premier has stated we cannot believe that he will allow the present monopoly to exist and no stone should be left unturned to have this country cut up.