The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1929 A POLITICAL FAIRY BALLOON

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 741, 14 August 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1929 A POLITICAL FAIRY BALLOON

TI-I-ERE is nothing more attractive to politicians throughout the King’s Dominions than the question of land settlement for land-hungry people. As a political subject it. provides wide scope for the expression of platform platitudes and promises, and for the adoption of election slogans. Here, in New Zealand just n ow, the cry of the 'party in power is “Fifteen thousand farms for fifteen thousand farmers,” or something like that equally extravagant. A few years ago in New South \Vales, the frothiest slogan was “A million farms for a million farmers.” And so on, accord—ing to the area of unoccupied territory and the optimism of politicians and shrewd speculators.

The Empire desire for more and still more land settlement should neither be, despised nor discouraged. But there should always be something said for expert observers of land settlement, who urge upon exuberant politicians the necessity of keeping nearer to common sense and for heeding the moral of experience, which is, “Make haste slowly; don’t be in a hurry to turn good runs into bad farms, and present to the boomster an ear stopped up with the cotton—wool of healthy pessimism or economic agnosticism.” This moral should be noted by the United Government, whose leading administrators put land settlement at the top of their programme, place in the middle of it stiff taxation handicaps on some of the farms they intend to provide, and reluctantly include at the tail-end of proposals the safeguarding of manufacturing establishments and the promotion 'of new industries. - “

Optimism about land settlement as a necessarily slow method for dispelling unemployment in one country and for theabsorption of immigrants from other countries is a good thing in itself, deserving of the heartiest encouragement, but if it fail to count the cost, then such optimism merely is a coloured fairy balloon. In the past score of years no Dominion in the Empire has had anything like Canada’s record for extensive land settlement. And perhaps no other Dominion excels Canada for expensive settlement of: thousands of migrants on her wide prairies. In the decade before the war, the oldest and greatest Dominion not only alienated almost the whole of her prairies, but also spent. £500,000,000 on railways and public works, all designed and thoroughly carried out for the development of land settlement. As a result of that colossal effort and expenditure Canada added only 170,000 farms to her roll of production. That phase of Canadian settlement on the land has not been greatly emphasised, because of the appreciable fact that. Canada, at the same time, practised alert enterprise on a remarkable development of manufacturing industries. So, while her raw farmers were struggling hard to throw financial “monkeys” off their backs, old and new cities were expanding rapidly, well-filled with artisans creating Wealth out of raw material and incidentally establishing a. large home market for the consumption of Canadian primary products at good prices. . Then consider the experience of Australia. There, as one commentator has observed, “Australians puff out their chests and tell the world that their country is 3,000,000 square miles big. is larger than the United States, nearly as big as Europe, twentyfive times as large as England and XVales. and 1,484,372,} times the size of Gibraltar.” Quite true. but very little is ever said about the physiographical factors which render probably two-thirds of Australia’s vast area useless for close settlement, unless there can be invented “a reverse gear which will make the south-east trade. wind blow the opposite way, or a lever which will push the continent 15 degrees further south.” Few of the States have any good land left for close settlement, and where Crown areas still are available the cost of settling one farmer works out in practice at a sum not less than £3,000 a farm. As far as land settlement in New Zealand is concerned, the latest report of the Under—Secretary of Lands, Mr. J. 13. Thompson. shows clearly that, within recent years, the politicians have had little to boast about. \There is a keen demand for land. but, unfortunately, many of the applicants have little or no capital at all. The recent purchases of land by the United Government are not discussed in the report, but there is no reason to expect that its record of settlement will prove to be a wonder in achievement.