Truth RAMSAY McDONALD AND THE LAND QUESTION.

NZ Truth, Issue 75, 24 November 1906, Page 4

Truth

RAMSAY Mc DONALD AND THE LAND QUESTION.

Published Every Saturday Morning at Luke's Lane (off mannersstreet), Wellington, N.z. , ( Subscription (m advance), 13s. per annum. ' saturday. November 24, 190g. *,■ . .

Mr Ramsay McDonald, the English Laborite, who recently spent a few days m this country and. is therefore entitled to tell us all about ourselves, has been giving; his impressions to the Victorian Press. Pie thinks we should . change our fiscal policy, reduce the cost of living and kick the freeholder into the eternal shades of oblivion. A very fair order for a flyine: visitor, and no doubt Sirjoe will. give the matter his full and undivided attention so soon as the House meets. However, machinating M a c didn't have his eyes shut altogether and he hit upon one big truth when he said that the big landowner was skimmin" 1 off the cream of this colony. As an avowed Labor man McDonald must, to make his marble good, ■' as they say m the classics, fight *the freeholder tooth' and nail. He says that if this country is- going to continue prosperous the freeholder must be knocked on the .head. To which sentiment, to quote from the classics ao-ain, the average New Zealander will reply RA double T S. It is the use that is made of the land and not the manner of holding it that affects the country. If the land holder, either freehold or leasehold, is 'going to run sheep m this country, and sheep only. this country is not going to get much forrader than it is at present. It makes absolutely no difference, whether a man derives an income of £20,000 a year from sheep grown on leasehold property O v free-. hold property. He doesn't pa^ 2d a bale more for shearing leasehold sheep, and the English buyer doesn't care the £ of a penny a pound whether the wool is grown leasehold or freehold. What troubles the English buyer is the, quality of the wool, and what troubles the New Zealand farmer is the price the Home buyer is going to pay. But where does the worker come m. The. shepherd, the shearer, the classes, the rouseabout, do they get a penny more wa"-es if wool goes up to is 3d ? They do not. The grower reaps all the advantage and the country, is really not any better off.

To take a single example. Last year Mr Riddiford is. credited with exporting from his various stations something like 2,000 bales of wool. At the prices ruling m London this would mean an income of £40,000 for the year's clip. The newspapers point to this as an example of New Zealand's prosperity. and look upon the hifrh price of wool as bringing a most welcome flow of coin to the colony. Is it so ?. IE wool had fallen 3d per pound, and Mr Riddiford's clip had only realised

£25,000, would the country have suffered ? We venture to say that it would not. £25,000 would have paid New Zealand's wool King handsomely, and although he might have growled about the poor price, he wouldn't have paid his various managers, station hands, shepherds, and shearers a penny less m wages. In fact he couldn't. A sheep run m this country is like a gold mine. The public have no use for the wool (excepting, of course, a very small portion of it) and a few individuals have the whole profit. New Zealanders have the glorious inheritage of a bounteous rainfall', and luxuriantly fertile soil. And what do they get from it ? Two-thirds of the country is given over to sheep and the profit is divided amongst less than one hundredth part of the population. It doesn't matter whether wool goes up or wool goes down, less than one m 100 benefits

It is very evident that if New Zealand's prosperity is to bs dependent upon wool, export of a single ounce it will have to cease. We will have to manufacture locally, and let the Englishman, who/ can't grow wool buy the made up cloth from us and riot the raw material. The New Zealand shearer, who, as a rule is not a ,deep political economist, says "■hooray" when he reads that wool has gone up fd a Ib, and, has another drink on the strength of it. He thinks m his shallow sort of ' way that |d a Ib on the New Zealand wool clip will mean thousands of pounds more money coming into the colony. He thinks so because • the dailypapers tell him so, but he never reasons as to where those thousands go. It never strikes him that his wages don't increase worth a damn. In fact they decrease, because their snendrng value becomes less. If the English manufacturer has to pay more for his raw wool he makes the fool New Zealand buyer pay more for his next new^ suit. So long as we are content to fn'ow wool and export it it is impossible for New Zealand to carry a very much bigger roxidation than at present. We must do one of two things. We must either manufacture the wool into cloth locally and thus directly give work to thousands of extra factory hands, and indirectly,, work to thousands who must supply those hands with the necessaries of life, or we must cut up all the. available sheep land into small farm holdings, and cultivate it to its best advantage. This will increase the value of the product three-fold, but it will require six times the' labor. Is it not better for six men to be making £300 a year each off an area of land than for one man to be making £1000 a year off it. This is putting it at a very low estimate. The man who is makin- £1000 a year by simply exporting wool must hokl sufficient land to give a very good living- to more than six families. The plain duty of the present Parliament is then to put a big iron hoof upon the big landowner y/ith ■ the least delay possible. It is not necessarily the fact of the land being freehold that does the mischief, it is the fact of on' 3 man being allowed to either hold or lease so much of it that he can grow wealthy .without" paying his just obligations to the State. No man should be allowed to hold, under any conditions whatever,, any land that he does hot use to the best advantage, not of himself , but of the State as.. a whole.