THE LAND BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8398, 12 April 1907, Page 6

THE LAND BILL.

URBAN LAND VALUES. OPEN LETTER TO MR McNAB. Mr Edward C. Evans, dentist, Willis Street, Wellington, has addressed the following open ' letter to the Hon. the Minister for Lands: — "Wilih Street, Wellington, "April, 1907. "To the Hon. Robert McNab, Minister for Lands. "Sir,—As a supporter of the present Government, and a sympathiser with political reformers generally, I take the liberty of addressing you on tha Land Question— (1) because your Bill, though an excellent measure, and containing nothing to which any landholder or farmer can reasonably object, leaves the urban land question untouched, for it contains no provision for increased taxation of urban land values; and (2) because your colleague, the Hon. Dr. Findlay, in a recent speech, suggested to the landless people that they should speak out on this question of land-law reform. I sincerely hope, Sir, that very many of.the landless residents in the cities and towns will not hesitate to address you on the great urban land question, which appears to many of us to be the chief national and local question. It is surely time, as Dr. Findlay suggested, that the landless in town and country began to look after their interests in the land. It may possibly be the intention of the Government to deal with the increasing urban land values in a Budget or Finance Bill. Anyway. I wish, on behalf of myself and many landless people, to put before you some important facts which show the justice and the great need for a substantial addition to the land tax. (1) As you arj aware, Sir, land values have risen high in all the cities, towns and hamlets of the colony, doubling, and, in some instances, trebling during the last twenty years. This increase is due to nothing that the landholders have done; it is due to no exertion and to no expenditure of capital on their part;- but is the direct result of increasing population and increasing public needs. I must ask you to note that, while economic rent has made so great an advance, there has been no corresponding increase in general interest and general wages. If we take into account the increased cost of living, the payment for labour is no more now than it was ten or fifteen years ago; indeed, labour was better off in the "early days," when the wealth produced was nothing like so great per head of the population as it is now. (2) The general rise in urban land values has about doubled the rents of dwelling-houses in most towns in recent years. In Wellington a wooden six-roomed cottage fetches five times more rent than a substantial brick or stone cottage of the same size in any city in England except London. All commodities have also gone up in price as a result of the great advance in economic rent, so that

the mental and manual workers of Wellington are no better off on a wage -of 10s per day than the labourers in the Old Land are on 5s per day. The working men in England, who are in receipt of from 35s to 50s per week, as very many of them are, do much better under Freetrado than most New Zealand working men are doing under Protection, and this notwithstanding all our boasted Labour legislation. Sir, please advise your colleagues in the Ministry never more to trumpet New Zealand as "The Working Man's Paradise." I do assure you that that paradise is in England, and there are a great many labourers in this colony who would be jolly glad to get back to it—even if it were only for the sake of good beer at l£d a glass. Just think of it! Sixpence per glass for inferior beer in what you are pleased to advertise as "The Working Man's Paradise!" Why, Sir, it is one of the biggest swindles on earth. The average British working i man would call this "paradise" by a shorter and very dreadful name. But I am digressing. (3) Another very baneful result of the tremendous and unnatural rise in urban land values is the fearful overcrowding, reports concerning which you must often have read in the newspapers. In proportion to numbers, overcrowding is as bad in Wellington as in London. In many cases the decencies of life are rendered impossible. How would you like, Sir, to live in a single|room with a family of grownup, sons and daughters? (4) Large areas of urban lands in all parts of the' colony are kept from being put to the most profitable use by the fan cy and speculative prices fixed by land syndicates, thus maintaining and increasing the high rents of dwellings, checking wealth production, hindering the progress of towns, and generally tending to impoverish the landless dwellers in towns. There is only one remedy for this crying evil and rank injustice to the landless residents, and that remedy is a heavy and progressive tax on land values, which would smash the "Land Trust," the foundation of all other nation-robbing "Trusts." (5) Under the present system of taxation the landleas are made to pay twice for public improvements. First of all they pay for these improvements in rates and taxes, and in a little while they pay for them again in enhanced rents, for, as you know very well, all these improvements enhance the value of land." This is robbery pure and simple. There is only one remedy for it—a big increase in the land tax. (6) The landless arc out off from the* use'of land for their own exclusive benefit, which means, of course, that they are cut off from free and independent life, and are completely at the mercy of private individuals who hold the land. This is a sore grievance which ought to be redressed without delay, and I submit, Sir, that the only effectual way of redressing it is by placing a heavy tax on urban land values. One of the primary duties of a Government is to provide land for all who want it. It is a duty which has been sadly neglected by every Government we have had; that is to say, every Government has failed to take the proper and necessary steps to ensure the attainment of the desired end—proved by the fact that urban land monopoly and the injustice and oppression involved in it, has continued unchecked, and was never more oppessive and more baneful to the public interest than it is to-day, notwithstanding that we have had a Liberal-Labour Government for about

fifteen years. (7) Do you believe, does any sensible man believe, that these injustices to the landless residents in towns would have continued , rampant all these years if they had been represented in Parliament by landless msn? I am sure you do not believe it. The policy, then, of the landless is to return no more landlords to Parliament; and let me assure you, Sir, that this is the policy they are going to adopt unless you and your brother landholders" in the House deal with this gr. at urban land question as it ought to be dealt with. Pardon, Sir, my plain speaking. The case demands it. (8). You may possibly not be aware that in the Home Land all Liberal statesmen are deepiy pledged to a substantial increase in the land tax, the proposal of land,reformers bong that the present tax of 4s in the pound shall be levied on the present value of land rather than on a valuation more than 200 years old. Those statesmen are also as deeply pledged to pass a measure empowering the local governing bodies to pay for all public improvements out of a rate on ground values. It is on these 2neasures that the Home Government intend to fight the House of (land) Lords, and fight it to the death. Now, I say, with all confidence, that the British land tax of 4s in the pound on the urban lands of this colony would do infinitely more good to the whole people, create a better distribution"of wealth, and do more to make the colony populous and powerful than all the legislation we have ever had. What right have the landlords to pocket nearly the whole of a value created by the community and give them nothing in return? If this is not wholesale stealing 1 do not know what stealing is. (9)" All wealth is the result of labour applied to land. The workers do not get half the wealth they produce because they are landless, and because economic rent always leaves them no more than a bare living. In vain do their trade unions endeavour to improve their position. All the leading economists of the world are agreed that there j can be no improvement in the posi- ! tion of labour without taxing ! economic rent, and that the improvement will be in proportion to the amount of the tax. Experience ' proves that they are right. So the ■ awards of the Arbitration Court, I when in favour of the workers, are mere delusions. Economic rent advances and leaves them where they were. Surely it is time our statesmen and politicians knew this, and were honest enough to tell the uninformed and deluded workers the . truth. In the long run, "honesty is I the best policy" in politics as in any I other business—the best policy for ! all—as the French landlords disI covered when the landless and op- ( I pressed people began chopping off | their heads. (10) Mr Andrew CarI negie, the great landowner and multi--1 millionaire, like Count Tolstoy, one ! of the largest landholders of Russia, is I now telling all the Governments of j Christendom what Radical parties and leading political economists have j been telling them for so many years, that there ought to be a very large tax on land values, and that the death duties ought to be a great deal higher than they are in most coun- ' tries. Would these large landholders j say this if they did not feel that j these changes are just and n'jeessary? | How mUch longer will this excellent and honest advice go unheeded by the j Government of this alleged progrea- , sive country? Is" it reasonable that i any Government, and especially a Liberal-Labour Government, should wait until the ill-informed and misguided masses find out for themselves j the extent to which they have been ! robbed by the 'landlords' for so many i years? Or is it not just and right that the Government should listen to the I'easonable demands of the intelligent section of landless people, and stop the robbery at once? (11) Every adult wage-earner in our cities and towns has to work not less than two dajs a week—rather more I think—for the sole benefit of the 1 landlord. He puts about £1 per week | into the pocket of the ground-lord for : allowing him to work for his living, i The fat ground-lord pays nothing to work, and when he does any work for the State it is for no small salary. But the poor landless men pay £SO a year and over for the right to work. Of course, most of them do not know it, or thei'e would be lively times in this colony. The thing is so monstrous that I must ask you how much longer a Government which makes great profession of the principles of Freedom and Justice is going to maintain a system by which Labour pays from eight to ten millions sterling per year to the landlords for the right to work? Surely we ought to be free to work without paying any toll whatever to private individuals. But ten millions ster- i ing a year! And this under a ■ "Liberal-LabourGovernment!!" And in "The Working Man's Paradise !!!" What will the next generation think of us? I wodld suggest, Sir, that the working nation be asked to vote on the question whether it is contented to pay ten millions sterling a year to the ground-lords for the right to work. Why not? It is surely a very proper question to put to the people. As it seems to me and many others, it is a far more important question than all the other questions you have been putting to the people. As compared with this the question of leasehold or freehold is nothing. (12) As you know, Sir, land is of no value until labour is applied to it. If a man has'a right to himself—and I think you will admit that every man has a right to himself —what right has the landholder to anything the labourer produces? When the landholder holds out his hand for economic rent, he emphatically asserts that he holds the labourer as his slave, who must either pay him toll for the right to live and work or I starve. It is really another form of chattel slavery, and in congested countries more ruinous in its results than the old slave system. And this is the system supported by Liberal Governments and by the Churches! (13) If what I have here stated as facts are really not facts, I shall be glad to be corrected; but if you believe that they are facts, I respectfully suggest that you shape j your [Land Bill according to the facts. Far better would it be to do this and face defeat in the House than continue in office tacitly supporting the most iniquitous system on earth. "With great respect, "I have the honour to be, Sir, "Yours obediently, ' "EDWARD C. EVANS." '

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