The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1929 IDLE MEN TO MAKE NEW FARMS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 597, 25 February 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1929 IDLE MEN TO MAKE NEW FARMS

IF the Hon. E. A. Ransom, a practical farmer as Minister of Public Works, does all the things he wanted to have done by the Government when he was an ordinary member of Parliament on the Opposition benches, there will be a great transformation of industry in this country. There will be no serious unemployment, millions of acres of occupied but uncultivated land will be subdivided into small prosperous farms, and the squatters and big landowners, who make fortunes from their freehold estates, will be compelled to pay a fair share of taxation. Last session, for example, Mr. Ransom assailed the Reform Administration for its failure in respect of land settlement and its tenderness toward big landowners, and noted that not a penny of tax was levied on one particular squatter’s ordinary income of £106,000, and an additional £20,000 representing a rise of 41d in the price of wool. “I think,” said Mr. Ransom, on that occasion, “it is a great disgrace to the Government that it allows these big landowners to escape their fair share of taxation.” In polities, however, experience has proved that there can be as much difference between a politician without portfolio and the same man with Ministerial responsibility as there was between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Ilyde. Already Mr. Ransom has pointed out that many large estates could not be profitably farmed in less than 2,000-aere lots. Doublless the new Minister will discover how necessary it may become to adjust former views to present actualities and difficulties. Meanwhile, Mr. Ransom has turned a bright light on the land settlement policy of the new United Government.

As one who knows what it really means to farm land rather than farm politics, the Minister of Public "Works has kept close to common-sense principles and practicable purposes. Judged on his interesting and important statement to a deputation at Rotorua, Mr. Ransom clearly realises that there is neither a royal road nor an easy short cut to successful land settlement. All the good land in the Dominion has been settled long ago, and most of the increased production in recent times has been due not to more settlement at all, but to improved scientific methods of cultivation. Such development as has been notable must be attributed almost entirely to better farming, to the practice of efficiency, and to a generous use of fertilisers. And those most competent to analyse and assess the true value of that great development have not hesitated to say that this method of progress has been more desirable and profitable than political schemes for indiscriminately bringing into cultivation waste land that is unsettled or has been abandoned because it is below the margin of economic cultivation. And it is to be hoped that the United Government, in its ardour for land settlement, will not create an extravagant land boom. So far, it is the intention of the new Government to absorb the unemployed in a co-ordinated system of public works making for quicker and closer settlement. The Minister of Public Works hopes to establish a settlement principle in the Rotorua-Taupo district and elsewhere by which the unemployed would be engaged in breaking in certain blocks of land. This done, good men would be selected from these workers and given first chance to settle on the land that had been prepared for profitable cultivation. Then the Minister of Lands, who has available £1,000,000 for the purchase of land, has a scheme in hand for land development. But since Mr. Forbes has no money for developmental purposes, Parliament will be asked to provide the necessary money. Out of Sir Joseph Ward’s prospective £70,000,000 in a series of loans, there should be plenty of money for everything and everybody. There is ample scope for experiment. Over 23,000,000 acres still are unoccupied, while an area of occupied land, about 10,250,000 acres, is not in productive use. It may yet be proved that tlie new Government will succeed where the old Government failed, but it is too early yet to jubilate about success. Much of the poor land that has been cultivated and is now paraded as wonder-land, has been brought to cultivation by means of hard work and an expensive use of fertiliser, without which it would become rubbish. There is an old saying that if one should boil bluestone with butter the gravy would be good. So with a great deal of New Zealand’s inferior land. But let the Government go ahead with its schemes. The unemployed remain anxious for work, and still are getting nothing- better than political talk.