BACK TO THE LAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 718, 18 July 1929, Page 10

BACK TO THE LAND

ECONOMICS SOCIETY LECTURE

The question of how to bring bark the days when the larger proportion of the population, exclusive of mining, was flocking to the backblocks, discussed by Mr. A. A. Ross, president of the Auckland branch of th« New Zealand Farmers’ Union, in a lecture to the Economic Society las *’

evening. Mr. Ross held this could not be don* by tolling the people about the peritv of the farmers, and urging to be optimistic. A reduction in toms tariff Avas the first step necessary in a policy to relieve land setu* ment. . I Mr. Ross maintained that it a reduction in the price of land t - * was needed so much as improvem in farming conditions, and these u now being effected. It was now 0® . possible to break in land which co not bo economicallv looked at a

years ago. H© said the trouble was that prices tended to fall, and costs * increasing, and being passed on to primary producers. - Manufacturers and workers able to relieve themselves of this D den by increased prices and wa f es ’ uf .: the farmer was handicapped ec his prices were fixed on the "

parity. * The speaker, in a historical traced the growth and developmen land settlement in New Zealand the earliest colonist times. A ‘ re a c . present time there were large a as fertile as any hitherto caltiv» l still lying idle, he sfiiid.