PAHIATUA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3903, 3 September 1891, Page 2

PAHIATUA.

From Our Own Correspondent.)

The new Commissioner of Crown Lands has taken a new departure. A groop of sections known as the 'Man* \ garamarama sections' is for sale, and ; on the printed posters we read, ; "Applications must be made in the proper forms, and will be received at ' this office and also at the County Council office, Pahiatua. They must be made in person to the Commissioner of Crown Lands or other officer of the department, who will attend there to receive them, but they will not be received at Pahiatua by post." Evidently this conceals some new idea. About a week ago a manuscript Dotice was put up by the Post Office window at Pahiatua station that the Commissioner would attend on Sept. 3rd and interview applicants, Does it not seem that this is springing a mine on them 1 Why not publish the Commissioner's intention in plain English in the printed posters 1 Numbers of settlers say they would a hundred times rather lease or buy from a private owner than from the Government, because the Act is so difficult to understand, and the condition so ambiguous that it would pay them to give 25 per cent more rather than be humbugged and delayed. I know a settler who took up close oa 4000 acres. Part was taken by friends, but he is managing it. lie has already spent £3OO, and for pecuniary reasons, which I do not know, it was considered desirable to convert the lease into a freehold. Now we all know how a private owner'would treat such a man. We can gueßS how the Wellington-Manawatu Railway would treat him. The Government on the other band

interpose delays. The Act is am- j biguous, and while Messrs Cadman and Smith are allowed to act in defiance of it 3 spirit by buying land near Danevirke in order to cut up and sell at a profit, here we have a settler called up to Wellington to prove he is " residing." If the Government want to force a man to "reside" they should define the term. A. man with large capital has no earthly reason for settling down in his bush and literally sleeping them for years on end. After he has started bushfalling he is only

in the road. What assistance can he render in cooking, washing, and felling trees ? He has his own affairs elsewhere, and it is far better that he should be profitably employed elsewhere and begin residence when the house is bnilt, fences up, and wool ready to ship. There are in my opinion only two courses to pursue, J viz., either boldly burst up large estates by a gradnated tax, or else let I the small settlers obtain their freeholds when they like. E*ery man of business knows that an unwilling tenant is a bad tenant. As things are, a man leases a piece of bush and then finds that for various reasons he wants to leave it. Why interfere with him 1 It is argued that if transfers were permitted, mere speculators would take up the land. This makes

me laugh. When a newspaper is for

sale, do wc find that " mere speculatori" rush grredily and buy it up at a higher price than the practical newspaper man will give 1 And that after that the said speculator sells out at a big advance to the same practical roan 1 It is notorious that where two'classes of purchasers compete, speculators and actual users, the latter must be able to hold their own. Speculation only comes in where the article (as a cap of tea) is too large for the consumer ; or where (as in railway shares) it can be sold at small cost. The cost (direct and indirect) of selling land is very great, and the speculators in ; bush land owe their existence to the i fact that, instead of it being auctioned,

it is ballotted for, at a price, sometimes, half what a practical man would gladly give for it. lam inclined to think that in a few years the present Land Act will become absolutely unworkabb, and we shall have a commissien and startling disclosures, and revert tofreetrade; every man allowed to buy and Bell as he chooses. It is no more an evil that a man should have £IOO,OOO worth of land, than that he should have the same amouut of bank shares. Land is limited I So are bank shares. Go and start a new bank and you will soon know why. The land is the source and origin of all wealth. How about the sun ? or water ? or air ? or human brains ? Without these what could land produce ? It is forgotten, too, that the great majority of men hate land, and would not have it at a gift except to see it again. Try it, Mr Editor, or rather conceive it. Make a list of all your staff, and imagine me presenting each with a little farm near Masterton. Sounds nice? How long would it be before they sold out? A farm means either large capital and a clever head, or else hard, rough dirty work all day long. Only the tew are capable farmers. Just in the same way only a few can tolerate the life of a schoolmaster, an artist and a bar-man. To attempt to make us all cockatoos by an Act is as absurd as to compel us all to paint in WBter colours, or shopt tigers. I would'nt shqot a xiger for a five pound note, yet an adventurous sportsman would give a fiver for the chance. Perhaps the reason why the masses want to dispossess landowners is that land is out here the only visible source of wealth. Men who hold large interests in trading companies, banks, or mines do not hold any apparent monopoly. Anyone oan start a rival store and run our great Mr C g off if he likes. But praotically C g monopolises a certain area of trade just as much as Mr B m monopolises Brancepeth. If I had capital and ofarted to run C g off, what are Ihe odds, t succed ? If I k» d ca P>^ and wanted t& eipaJß m.how i3C£ would it take me to buy a bigger run ? I think I can put the thing now in a! nutshell. If C g and his friends combined and raised the price of sugar to 1/- a pound, they would compel us to abolish them. But they never have; they practically couldn't. Similarly, if J}— r m and other land owners successfully combined and raised the price of the produce, we might have to dispossess them, They never hare ; and I doubt if they ever will. Hence it is known very well that there are alwayß lease runholders who are ready to sel] their land. They reckon they can only get about four per cent, on large sums on good security, hence if a run brings in a net of UOO they want £IOO,OOO for it. And that is called asking a prohibitive price! If it were true that small farmers ceuld produce don ble or treble hat the big runholders do, the price would not be prohibitive. The ''unearned" increment question I have not alluded to, as it is really the smallest holdings where it is largest. That is in town sections.