The Leasehold.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 29, 4 February 1904, Page 4

The Leasehold.

Commenting upon the meeting hi'ld in Christ church last week in support of tlu' leasehold tenure of lai'l, Truth soys The most amusing tiling- about r.e leaseholders' ' foundations of h-elief" is their calm assumption that land goes oa increasing in value, and that a man has only got to buy a ij!o.-k tyi land somewhere to-day to lind himself a rich man twenty years hence, the said .riches having accnle\ owing to a mysterious sonieihiiigi known as the "unearned Increment." If Messrs Fowlds, Taylor, Ell, and Laureiison had had any experience of pastoral lands. or even spent a year in the country in their lives, they would perhaps understand what idiotic nil.Hicsh they are talking. The fact, is that tlve price of land must be controlled by the market price of wool and mutton, aiKl if \voo]|ami mutton gn-t cheaper in the future—as they assuredly will when South Africa ami South America get settled —the price of land will get cheaper 100. As a matter of fact there arc scores, hundreds of cases in the colony where the land to-day is worth a great deal less than the owners gave for it twenty years ago. Yet Messrs Fowlds, Taylor, Kll, Laurriison, and Co., who never owned any pastoral lands in their lives, persist in talking about the unearned increment, and the great wealth of the land-owner.