The Daily News SATURDAY, APRIL 24. BACK TO THE LAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 75, 24 April 1909, Page 2

The Daily News SATURDAY, APRIL 24. BACK TO THE LAND.

Writing. in ii recent issue of tlie Loml'Vi Daily News on the land question, Mr. li. L. Outhwaite concludes: "To save and restore tlie village is to save Knjrlaiul." Writers and statesmen for the past half century have deplored the passing of England's old-time r iiral greatness, and I the exodus of the country population to the cities. To the national disaster, moral, physical and financial, that must inevitably follow such a migration, and win hack to the soil the departing yeomanry ami husbandmen is cine of the, greatest problems in the Old Country to-day. n problem that perhaps may only be solve,! by revolution. For it must be remembered that the depopulation of rural England is brought about not so uracil by voluntary migration as bv a compulsion consequent 011 the hopelessness of the struggle under the present landlord system. Unglaiid is mrsed with an incubus in the fovm of a titled aristocracy which owns by hereditary right hundreds of thousands of acres 0! the richest land in the country, and from which tli e plough lias been banished to provide game preserves for the owners. | There are, we know, hundreds of exception* to this class of landlord, but all the evidence available shows only lo«> plainly that the tendency to close huge areas of country to agriculture is a steadily growing -one. We have before us a report on the locked-up land in one division of England, showing that the whole of four Ditkeries, comprising -18,000 acres, i<s devoted almost entirely to pheasant solitudes, wherein.the tilled owners and their friends may amuse themselves. And in this division a number of men have applied for and been refused permission to lake up small I holdings: denied the right to work land j that is producing 110 wealth for the country. Under the Small Holding; Act of liltff, the most advanced land legislation ever attempted in the Old Country, and analagous in most of its essential provisions to our kinds for Settlement and Land Purchase Acts, an honest attempt has been made to render it possible for those desirous of taking up I brad to be accommodated, provision even ! being made for the compulsory acquisition of suitable areas. The experience to date, however, does not show that the ideal of the promoters of the Act lias been realised. The opposition of the landlords, 110 doubt, is mainly responsible for the comparative non«iccess of the operations of the Act up to the present. The Duke 01 .Newcastle, one of the largest landed proprietors, recently spoke of the creation of small holdings as a beautiiul but unrcalisable dream, and uttered tliive words of- warning: "The creation of these small holdings must enormously increase the burden of the rates, which is now a heavy one. It, therefore, behoves the larger tenant farmers to watch very closely the working of the Act and to keep themselves well acquainted with SI its functions."

Viewed from the Xew Zealand standpoint. which lias the merit of being based on actual experience, ii must 1m apparent how utterly false is the reactionary theory of individuals like the Duke just quoted. The English (iovermnent that lias the courage, not merely to provide legislation of the Small Holdings type (for which, apparently, tlie people are not yet ready I. but to impose a graduated lax and force land upon the market, will do more to turn attention to the land, and to popularise the cry of "back to the land" than anything hitherto attempted. Can one imagine a condition of all'airs such as the following to exist anywhere outside Conservative England'! Recently, and for the better preservation of his game preserves, an owner refused land for cottages required by the men of the colliery on his estate (from which lie derives the royalties nveessary for liis ducal magnificence), with the result that about a thousand miners have to live.in a village over tfie Derby,shire border, and. tramji the four intervening miles! When English tradeunionists awaken to the fact that all their interests do not lie in the cities, when tliey realise that tlie bursting up of huge idling estates would provide com- | i'ortablc homes and livings for thousands | Of their fellows, we may e\pcct to witness a vigorous campaign having for its

X object the re-settling of Englishmen on ▼ the soil. The Parliamentary reprosentaX fives of labor in England., notwithsiatulr ing their many obviously absurd doeX triues, are -still a growing power whose X whole-souled object is the upliftineiit of ▼ tin? masses. It is, therefore, only n mcr t . k matter of time when their eves will be Y turned hungrily to the land, which canY not, in the be*t interests of the nation, X he much longer reserved us a special T prerogative of a non-productive, though ♦ titled, das*.