FREETRADE AND TAXING LAND VALUES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8510, 13 August 1907, Page 5

FREETRADE AND TAXING LAND VALUES.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —A gentleman, named Mr Evans, an alleged friend of the workers of New Zealand, addressed a meeting in this town on a recent evening, in favour of freetrade and a tax on land values. The mossy ideas of Mr Evans are about as out, ofjjdate as the Moa, and his facts are of less value than the imagining of ajmodern Ananias. The workers of New Zealand would do well to flee from the. teachings of Mr Evans, as they would from the plague. Just how Mr Evans successfully dodged' the ghost of Cobden, and avoided the spectre of Bright, and shut his eyes to the workless men, the miserable ; women and the starving little children who crowd the slums and the gutters of the cities of England as the direct result of freetrade, is a mystery. Mr Evans said freetrade meant cheap food and clothes and boots for the New Zealand wo~kers. And when the cheap goods, the product ;of a horde of Hindus in a cellar and the handiwork of a seething mob of Chinese in a reeking den, arrive in this colony, then will the well paid artisan and the skilled mechanic be brought into direct competition with the starving workers of theOld World. Then the New Zealand factory and workshop will close their doors, and the New Zealand workers will join the unemployed, and live on the cheap food, and clothe themselves with the cheap clothes, that freetrade has landed in this colony. Mr Evans says cheap goods and low prices for produce are good for the workers. In New Zealand about 25 years ago wheat was 2s a bushel, oats were selling at lOd to Is a bushel, potatoes were 10s a ton, butter was 4d to 6d a lb, fat lambs were 4s 6d each, the market price of a fat sheep was 5s to 8s 1 per head. At the same time this colony was full of unemployed, relief works at wages from 2s 6d to '4s a day were put in hand to relieve the distress, and soup kitchens were in full swing in some of the' big towns of New Zealand. Where were Mr Evans' cheap living, and good and prosperous time 3 then? The'same gentleman stated that a tax on land values of 4s or 5s in the £ should be imposed. The worker in his cottage on a quarter acre-section worth £IOO would at 5s in t':e £ pay a tax of £25 a year for his quarter-acre. The farmer with a 50-acre farm worth £2O an acre, if taxed at the raty of 5s in the £, on land values would pay £250 a year in taxation. How the worker, (earning next to nothing a week under freetrade) was going to pay the £25 a year for his quarter-acre section, and what kind of produce the farmer was going to produce to assist him to pay the deadly tax of £250 a year for a 50-acre farm was left to the imagination of his hearers, while the speaker closed a truly wonderful address by inviting those present to buy some cheap literature on the subject. A reformer and a friend of the worker "is" Mr Evans. —I am, etc., J.Y.