THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1892. A REMEDY FOR DEPRESSION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2349, 28 April 1892, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1892. A REMEDY FOR DEPRESSION.

Mr John Haughton, of Sydney, formerly a prominent citizen of Dunedin, where he resided for many years, sends a very interesting article on New Zealand depression to the president of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce. He advocates the advertising and selling of New Zealand land in England, and suggests that a small company be formed, called “ The New Zealand Colonisation Company,” with capital enough to undertake the sale of mortgagee’s laud who do do not know what to do with it, and charge them a good commission for doing so. He considers that the company should at least have capital enough to spend £50,000 in advertising, in showing “ the yokels a fleece from New Zealand,” and in giving “ the chaw-bacons a slice of New Zealand ham, and a good glass of New Zealand treble X.” Farmers, he thinks, would then know what kind of soil and climate the fleeces and hams came from, and could lease or buy a farm by map or photograph, or m situ.” This, in Mr Haughton’s opinion, would pay the owner and the mortgagee, be he banker or Home capitalist, and by-and-by “ would lift commerce out of the perpetual mess it has been in for the past ten years.” He points out that the rural population of Great Britain know no more of New Zealand than they do of Alaska, and he could see no reason why the affair could not be advertised, so as “to make the country folk stare.” The Chaffeys, he shows, are selling in London, by sheer advertising, irrigated land 1 that cost them £1 per acre for £2O per acre, and the “land is going like hot cakes.” Mr Haughton then goes on to speak in glowing terms of this district. He says : “ I speak what I know when 1 say that one acre in North Otago and South Canterbury, for a Briton to live on and off, is worth five acres in Mildura, or Reumark, or anywhere in Southern California.” He argues that there will be no more gold rushes, public works, or borrowing booms in New Zealand, and, therefore, until colonisation is taken in hand, “not the bravest and strongest but the meanest and greediest will succeed.” “ England’s children,” he says, “ are stifling in the city air, black with the smoke of the furnace, but let them once get their feet on New Zealand soil and they will show the world what they came to do.” Speaking of large estates of farming land, he says “ they wont pay,” and tells of a man in the Oamaru district who never made his laud pay, but his tenant did, for the tenant’s wife paid the rent by the poultry, and the tenant pocketed his profit on the wheat crops. As an example of how well advertising succeeds in colonising a place, he refers to Reumark and Mildura, which, “four years ago, were as bad a desert as Moses had to cross—a waste, a howling wilderness, sacred only to the kangaroo and dingo, and what they are now is a matter too notorious to mention.” He advises New Zealand people to travel if they want to know what their country is worth, and he becomes emphatic when he says : “To see people other than prosperous in such a country as New Zealand, and business other than brisk for all who behave themselves, is a sin and a shame.” The way to carry out this colonisation scheme of his he puts in very few words. “Itis no use,” he says, “ whining to the State for help, it is for the commercial men—men who have run a grocery or ironmongery store, or a ship or two—and done it properly—to take the thing in hand and ask the public to help them.”