THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 1909. CANADIAN SETTLEMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9569, 16 August 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 1909. CANADIAN SETTLEMENT.

A rich reward is now being reaped by the Dominion of Canada for its I spirited land settlement policy. i Wheat is to North-Western Canada what wool, meat and butter are to our North Island, and the upward tendency of wheat prices is a steady incentive to Canadian agriculture as the upward tendency of butter prices would be in our island were it not for the extraordinary reluctance ot our Government to permit and encourage the legitimate use of wante lands. As recently as July. 1907, I the wheat yield of the great NorthWestern provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan was about 70,000.000 bushels. The streaiu of settlement from all parts of North Europe and from trie Western States of America then pouring into the wheat-raising region lifted the crop for iyoß to 110,000.000 bushels. For the present season of 1909 the wheat yield from these provinces is estimated at 157,000,000 bushels. For with the same moderately favourable seasons and at the present rate of Canadian development, these three provinces alone will soon furnish an annual wheat supply of' from 200,000,000 to 300,000,000 bushels, and be capable or supplying the great bulk of the total wheat and flour importations of the United Kingdom. For the annual British wheat demand is for about 200,000,000 bushels in addition to the home supply and the Australian and Indian growers already provide another 20,000,000 bushels. It is becoming evident that the Empire can esiily produce its own bread stuffs, thanks to the patriotic and energetic action of Canadian statesmen in opening up to agriculturists the great North-Western territory, which only a generation ago was a furhunting round, inhabited by a few settlers and by a few Indian hordes. The Dominion "Consolidated Fund" revenue has risen during the past five years from £11,500,000 to £13,500,000 without increased taxation and without any great dublic enterprises such as those whose business swell" Australasian Budgets. While New Zealand is faced by taxation problems, Canada is enjoying an uninterrupted strengthening of her financial position, owing to the increase in revenue' winch automatically follows the increased production and increased purchasing power of her increasing population. New Zealand, though much smaller, possesses many advantages over Canada. Our population is more homogeneous and more British; our climate is more temperate and more genial ; our isolation has given us a corporate nationality which haa made truly progressive legislation very easy.

One fault towers peak-like among our administrati/e methods, remarks the Auckland "Herald." and only those who have helped to create it attempt to deny it; the fault of lockirg up the land against settlement, of ignoring the fundamental maxim that the working of the land is the basis of all wealth and of all prosperity. Mr Carroll, driven to bay in defence of the "tr.iboa" system, which fruited this winter in the sorrows of the unemployed and in the dreary failure of relief works, is now engaged in , the Sisyphean cask of rolling masses of figures up 'he hill of unmistakable facts. If we could accept the confusing numerals of our ActingPrime Minister we should be forced to believe that there is no lunger such a thing as locked up Maori bands, and the Main-line runs throuerh a King Country which smiles with fa'ms and is rich with "profitable use,", and that the unbroken wilderness which tor so | many miles appears to greet the eye of the overland traveller is a mere optical delusion. Unfortunately, ereat national problems cannot be considered settled however much they may be shelved by the shuffling of great responsibilities from one authority to another; for land locked-up by Native Land Boards is just as much locked-up as though it had been subjected to any other form of official taboo. The North Island is blockaded in a hundred places and in a dozen ways, either by order of the Government and of Parliament or by the inaction of the Government and of Parliament.