The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1917. AGGREGATION OF OUR LAND.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 12 February 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1917. AGGREGATION OF OUR LAND.

(With which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News).

lii face of the fact that this country will soon be called upon to provide for the demobilisation anu return to civil life of many thousands of men who are now fighting tor our right to exist as a free people, every thoughtful man will view with some concern the wholesale aggregation or land that is proceeding in all parts of this highly productive district. Our Government proclaims from the housetops that land is wanted, and that it is not available in areas that aggregate anything like a sufficiency for settlement purposes, but an analysis of Government methods leaves no other conclusion than that they are largely pretence, and little else than pretence. Some of the best land in New Zealand, from a production point of view, has been offered to the Government by owners in this district. A perfunctory report has been asked for when it would, from all appearance, and from undeniable e\i dence have been more honest and straight-forward to have given a definite “No, we don’t want land around Taihape” to those who were willing to share their holdings with the men v>Lo are coming back frcm battlefields in Europe, Africa and Asia. Landholders and owners have now come to the conclusion that it is futile, and waste of time to offer their land for settlement purposes unless they are prepared to make a present of it. Only recently another case, proving t-.re Government’s insincerity about wanting land, and also about its encouragement or lamentable indifference to the building up of huge estates by a process of aoo-reo-ation, came under notice. A

well-known settler here offered to purchase a portion of his neighbour’s farm; before entering into negotiations the prospective seller said he would offer it to the Government. Although he was offered twenty-six pounds an acre lie was willing for the State to have it at twenty-five pounds. The Government said it was not worth more than sixteen pounds, and the disgusted owner at cnco parted with half his holding for twenty-six pounds to the man on the next section, who is a praclical farmer, and knows more about the value of land hereabout than all the Government men put together. Twenty-six pounds was readily forthcoming for what the Government said was only \v*th rd'-teen. Further, the b'ffa' co "T the a.w'a offered is under e-'-'i' -’■ r aether neighbour at i .. ends oer aero, and thus it is by such processes—winked at ana

aided by the Government—this dis- \

trict has one excellent settler less. This, case .is mentioned, but it is only one <pf many of a similar nature. It is time the people of this district enlisted the assistance of their representative in Parliament and approacned the Mininster of Lands personally, lor it is not believable that he, a practical farmer, who has played a strong part in settling the country, is deliberately aiding the disastrous aggregation that is going on in this locality, undoing what he, in the past, took such pains to accomplish. rr a vigorous campaign against aggregation were instituted, say by our Chamber of Commerce, with the member for the district at its head, and it was pointed out to the Minister that land he values at sixteen pounds for settlement purposes is being eagerly aggregated at twenty-six, it would settle the question definitely, whether the Government was sincere in its slogan of “Settlement and still more settlement, or whether it was aiding and abetting “Aggregation and still more Aggregai tion.” By the way, we learn that the | Premier of New Zealand has at lasc become convinced that after-war conditions will be totally unlike what obtained prior to the war. tie has realj ised that we are on the threshold of an entirely new age; that isolated standards are to become universal; that great questions of life will tolerate neither evasion nor delay, that the absorbing into civil life of millions of men, and the return of millions of women to domesticity will involve changes that would have taken hundreds of years by the ordinary process of evolution. Our Ministers at Home are having the facts thrust upon them, while we go blundering on unconscious of, or wilfully disregarding the inevitable. These coming civil changes must be met, a provisional solution must be found or, we are told by almost every responsible journal in Great Britain, Conservative and Liberal, and by every responsible British statesman, from the Prime Minister down, there will be a breakdown in our civilisation, in other words, a, bloody revolution. Instead of preparing to solve the problem with which we are to be faced, we go cn heedlessly putting our land into fewer hands, reducing instead of increasing the number of producers, adding to the casualness of our production instead of encouraging intensiveness. This has all to be reversed; the mischief the Government is responsible for in permitting aggregation has to be accounted for. Those steeped in avarice may think they can bluff the masses into electing a Parliament tnat will protect them, while hundreds of thousands arc without the means of living, but such a condition will never again be tolerated. The masses of the people have realised what is in the near future, and they are organising and consolidating against the day of reckoning with exploitation, that is as sure to come as that we are here. Why not settle the land and bring about intense cultivation that will result in sufficient food being grown to feed our population? Insufficient wheat is being grown at the present time, and we are faced with shortage of bread if we cannot import wheat or flour. Our lands are being aggregated into large areas on which to grow wool for people at the other side of the world, while cur own population is faced with semi-starvation because land for settlement on which to grow food is not available. Aggregation is a synonym for starvation. Will the people tolerate it? If not, to what are we 'drifting.