THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1909. SETTLEMENT AND MARKETS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9605, 27 September 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1909. SETTLEMENT AND MARKETS.

The encouraging rises in the market prices of both wool and butter mean that the agricultural industry has an additional inducement t> in. crease its production and that a further incentive would be offered to land settlement were the Jocked-up lands of.this Dominion made available. An increase of one penny upon the poundage price of wool represents a gain to New Zealand of three quarters of a million sterling, w,hile every shilling per cwt. for butter represents nearly £20,000 more. The stronger and the steadier our London markets become, the greater is the reward offered to the industrious settler, and the greater the output of wealth-winning national production. : Our internal trade and our industrial prosperity, our public revenues and our commercial activities depend wholly upon the development of the natural resources of the Dominion, of which natural resources the agricultural are the most permanent 'and the most important. Every city and town in New Zealand can only provide employment for its workers and trade for its merchants by virtue of the wealth poured infrj it from the inexhaustible springs of the province at large. It is this wealth which supports our Government and our railways, our workI shops and our, factories, our whole sale and retail trades, and every other phase of national life. To take full advantage of our national opportunities is therefore a national duty which the personal interest of every citizen should press urgently upon the Government; and it is in its national duty of settling the lar.d the present Government has most ignominiously railed. Speaking in Ranuitikei, Mr Fowlds has been asserting that over 500,000 acres have been thrown open annually by the Ward Administration; but he does not tell us how little of this has been ji /the form of small agricultural holdings on O.R.P. conditions. Mountanious areas, where leases have lnpsed and been renewed are counted by defenders of the Government in the same category as bush lands into which hardy settlers go with axe and fire; and by the same special plead ing the opening of Native Lands under oppressive short term leases, which choke improvement, are held to be the same as the opening of blocks where small settlers may make for their children and their children's chi.dren comfortable homes and an assured inheritance. Everything Bhould be subordinated to the most pressing necessity of opening land—Crown and Native—while the markets offer such encouragement to settlers. The day may come when prices may fall again—a contingency which can be regarded with equanimity by settlers who have made good : use of the fat years to prepare for the lean, but which may well be fatal to new settlement if land is , locked up until it no longer offers the golden inducements it does at present.