INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 225, 28 January 1911, Page 8

INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION.

To tile Editor. Sir,—The remark of Mr. Beeby that Maoriland had just about reached the limit in industrial legislation is another way of saying that our politicians have during the last fifteen years of social and labor legislation only grasped half a truth. The result proves that they have pursued a wail-eyed policy, and run the political engine 'into a "dead end. Down through all the ages the landlord is the only enemy the worker ever need protection from, and lie is the one that reformers have religiously ignored. These latter have wasted much breath in shoving mythical foes, political banshees, bogies, etc., from the workman larder, but the actual pillages they have for various reasons failed to notice. Stripped of all its tinsel, show and sentimental twaddle, the legislative machinery of to-day exists for the benefit of the city land-owner and the country monopolist. The protective barriers which were erected to ensure the workman getting a higher price for his labor would have been of some benefit to him had! provision been made preventing the land- 1 lord from raising his rent in proportion! to his increasod earning power. Workmen in some of our cities receiving £2 Ills per week are paying 25s per week house I rent .or places which a lew years agoi they could get for one-third the money. The reason for this abnormal increase I in rent is not that competition for these! houses i.5 keener, but because of the fact' that the main portion of the revenue is' filched from the consumer, the land thereby escaping its just burden. Hence its inflated value. There is certainly something wrong with a system which in effect enables a landlord to say to a workman, "Half what you earn belongs to me." It might not be robbery, it might not be slavery, but it is something dangerously close to both. If the Government has increased the rent roll of| the city landowner it has also shown its tender solicitude for the welfare of the country monopolist. The waving of ban-i ners and blare of trumpets announce the' entry of the compulsory land purchase idea into the political arena, and it was confidently asserted that this measure would be the death of the land-grabber, and that that gentleman would gather up his goods and chattels and hit out for the sky-line. But he did nothing of the sort. He stayed where he was, x and grabbed like Gehenna. And a fool Government, instead of hitting him over the knuckles with a heavy graduated land tax, thereby compelling him to sell and give the small man a chance to get cheap land, bought him out at the inflated values of its own creation, and, in consequence, the small man got dear land, while the land-grabber did some grabbing further 011, and waited for the! Land Purchase Board to come along and buy him out again. The graduated landj tax in its present form would be a good] measure if the Land Purchase Board were abolished, but it is nullified by the I actions of the latter. At the price which | New Zealand produce now stands there should not be an acre of unproductive land in the Dominion, but until land reform consists of only one measure, a heavy graduated land tax, there will always be, much to the detriment of the country, both grabbers and speculators. J —I am, etc., FRANK BELL. Toko, January 28. '