LAND AGGREGATION.

Free Lance, Volume XVIII, Issue 984, 14 May 1919, Page 8

LAND AGGREGATION.

An Enemy to Increased Production

AT a .time like the present when economic experts are constantly telling us that the only means by which we can bear our heavy burden of taxation lies in increased production it is simply disgusting to read of the land aggregation which is going on, apparently unchecked by anything the Government can, or is willing to do. To ensure increased production there must be closer cultivation and closer settlement. Every available acre of land should be utilised up to its full productive capacity. Men should take the place of sheep. The day of the large holdings, we are frequently told, has gone for ever. Nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the large holdings are increasing, small farm after small farm being bought up and acre added to acre. * * * » Just recently some very startling statements have been published relating to land aggregation in the Weber district. "Where, a few years ago, there lived forty families are now. three or four. Dairy factories and schools have been closed, and for miles the friendly smoke of a. cottage chimney is not to be seen. This is the result of land aggregation- —that land aggregation the evils of which have time afjber time been expounded in Parliament. These evils the Massey Govern- ~ ment promised to suppress, but this neither the special legislation of that Government nor of the National Government, has succeeded in doing. How can we have increased production when the would-be v farmer finds it so diffisult to to'* get land, and the small farmer is being steadily bought out, tempted by a high price to part with his mess of pottage. When Parliament meets one of the first things to be done "is for members who do not belong to the Sheep Kings' clique to insist upon drastic legislation being passed to effectively remedy- this serious ever-growing evil.