CAPITAL AND SETTLEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume X, Issue 2926, 30 August 1879, Page 3

CAPITAL AND SETTLEMENT.

(To the Editor.)

SIF, —May I ask you to express your opinion on the electioneering cries lately raised throughout the colony in support of the present Government. I mean those against capitalists, monopolists, and land-sharks, my own opinion being that such cries are calculated seriously to injure the colony, and are utterly wrong. The colony, to my mind, does not require anything so much as capital and capitalists, for it would require a hundred million of pounds to put this island down in grass alone, and till that is done the land will be all but valueless. The progress made in Waikato has been made solely by capitalists, and the interior is quite useless for small men to occupy. I presume that what is meant by landsh.irks is those who buy land in large blocks, and if it is so, then f assert that in the interior land can be made to pay only by using large blocks, more especially the poorer sorts of soil, and while I would advocate rich soil near towns being sold in moderate sized farms I know that to offer small farms on three-fourths of the interior would be only throwing away money on surveys. As a matter of fact, I can assure you that some of the large estates in Waikato and other places in the province are comprised of some hundreds of small farms originally owned by settlers who found they could not make it pay and sold out. Neither grain-growing or sheep and cattle-rearing will pay on small plots of land.—J. S. Macfarlane.