THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1912. THE LAND QUESTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10573, 2 March 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1912. THE LAND QUESTION.

We make no excuse for returning to a subject of pressing importance to every man, woman and child in the Dominion. Before the question of the settlement- of the land, every other question engaging the attention of the politicians of Mew Zealand to-day pales into insignificance. For upon this alone ■depends the solution of almost all of our social and economic problems. Why are people crying out about the cost of living? Because the land is not producing wiiat it should be producing. Why is the population drifting towards tho cities? Because it is offered insufficient inducement to settle on the land. Why are our secondary industries languishing, in all directions? Because the primary industry is not being developed to its fullest. Why are our imPjKtij increasing at a greater ratio

than our exports? Because we are not devoting sufficient attention to the primary products of the soil. For the last twenty years we have been blessed with a Liberal Government, which lias claimed to be imbued with a desire to ameliorate the condition of the people. And what has this Government done in the way of land settlement? Has it taken the peole out of the cities and placed them in a position of hope and independence? Has. it prevented the aggregation of estates? Has it burst up the large estates as it promised to do? Has it encouraged those who have gone out into the wilderness to carve out homes for themselves? Has it provided access to markets and reasonable road and railway facilities? To all of these questions there is only one answer, and that is, emphatically, "No!" Can the people entrust their destinies further with a party which hap absolutely failed to do its duty in"theway of land legislation? Can it hope for improvement from a combination of Radicals, which Relieves that every sixpence of what is termed "unearned increment" should go to the State ? Is there any hope for the apeedy--settlement of the waste. Crown and Native lands when people hold the reins of office who do not understand the fundamental principles underlying the . subject ? Can the politician who has'..spent his life in the city, and whose outlook is obscured by factory smoke, be expected to realise the disabilities' of the man upon the soil? How","in. the mime of progress, can the country hope to prosper when its greatest industry is crushed and devitalised by quacks and theorists? The Labour representatives! in Parliament will yet realise (that they have made a^mistake in pinning their faith to men who have no more practical acquaintance with , land settlement than they have with i the ethereal world. If they had used | .their own .co'mmon-sense, instead of Seing deluded by mischievous suggestions of Conservatism and Toryism, they would have known that they were .supporting a party whose career has been one. of failure on this momentous question, against a party which at least offered a practical and speedy solution of the problem. The mistake is one which they will rue only once—and that will be all their lives. The hair-brained schemes which have been evolved by the Ward Government from time to time have evaporated under, the first exposure to public criticism. The schemes of their .successors are doomed before their incubation, by reason of the fact that they are entrusted to men" who' are notoriously ignorant of the whole subject.