THE LAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 202, 6 May 1912, Page 4

THE LAND.

Speaking at the Liberal social at Stratford recently, Mr. W. T. Jennings, once more drew attention to the hardships which the settlers in the backblocks of Taranaki have to undergo. Like the'historical Red Indian, they have been "driven towards the setting sun," in an endeavor to wrest homes for themselves and for their families from the untrodden wilderness. Tfie wonder is that their complaints are so few instead of being bo many. But the point which Mr. Jennings sought to emphasise, very rightly, is that in. an endeavor to remove their personal disabilities they are confounding cause and effect. "It is not right," he° said, "that these men and their families should be forced to go to such places when thousands of acres of lovely land in Ilawke's Bay and elsewhere are being held in single l hands." And then he proceeded to pertinently ask: "Is the proposal of the Liberal party to' devise methods to take this kind of land for closer settlement one 1 1 of the reasons of the strenuous efforts of ' the Reform Party to remove the Liberal* from office? Why will the small farmers of Taririaki oppos® the wellbeing of others who are deairou* of hewing homes for themselves from tha land, by allowing themselves to .be ranged in the ranks of the army which is supporting the big landowner?, to th» detriment of their own class and of the colony generally?" There is a whole lot of "horae sense" in this frank statement of the position. The old proverb which says "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know," has a singular appositeness in politics in New Zealand. We are not among those- who regard the present Government as being infallible and without fault, but until the Opposition will pledge itself to some platform of reform, which will embody a policy of progressive land settlement, it is useless 1 to look to it to cure the very present ills which flesh is heir to in those parts of the country which are remote . from its main-travelled roads. The Government is committed, among other progressive measures, to a policy of vigorous land settlement; the Reform Party, despite its protestations to the contrary, cannot undertake such a policy unless it contemplates committing political suicide. Dog does not eat dog, and it is frankly impossible to imagine the Masseyg and the Buchanans', and the Ormonds and the Herries, laying their heads together in a valiant endeavor to cut up each other's estates for the benefit of Bill Jones and Tom Smith. A southern journalist at present sojourning in Hawke's Bay writes to the Waimate Witness upon the conditions existing in, that fertile country, and puts the position quaintly and forcibly. Says he : "If the Mackenzie Government seriously mean business and are inspired by a genuine desire to do something for the und'er-dog, this is the place to come along and operate an explosive burstingup policy.. The Opposition have adroitly managed during the last few years to concentrate attention on the Maori lands, and Ward, whose resources as a battling leader were nil, walked into the trap and allowed himself to be put on the defensive and continue to asseverate at intervals in an uncertain husky voice that he was hurrying up all his available force of surveyors to carve up and rush some millions of acres of Maori lands into the market. Seddon's coun-ter-stroke in such an eventuality would be to give Massey and the monopolists a big dose of their physic in the form of a dynamic land tax 'that would have I thrown an army of small cultivators, dairy farmers and sheep men on to the rich lands down here. Instead of a few shepherds and rouseabouts on these gireat estates that stretch away to the Tim of the farthest horizon, there should be homesteads and schools and flourishing towns and all the other .attendants of a progressive and humane civilisation. The other day_l was on the Te Mahanga estate of 15,000 acres, which carries with ease the astounding number of 35,000 ( sheep. On 1200 acres of swamp land / alone there are pastured SOOO sheep. All these fine lands are in the hands of a I couple of bachelor brothers who are

worth less to the country than a working dairy farmer in Taranaki. These men simply roll in wealth. The Mackenzie Government has just one chance left. Its field' of operations lies here, and if it shirks or neglects this supreme national duty of giving these lands to the people the completion of the disaster that overwhelmed the Liberal party last December awaits it for a surety at an early date. What will the Mackenzie Government do?