OUR NATIONAL ENDOWMENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 205, 30 August 1926, Page 14

OUR NATIONAL ENDOWMENTS.

(To the Editor.) i Sir.—The only bit of freehold the j majority of the people have got may be i lost. We should be proud of these endowments, the Government that set them aside, and the purpose for which the revenue is used. Surely public sentiment and honesty will not allow them to j be slaughtered in the hour of a wild j clamour for the freehold. From the land user's point of view the leasehold to the State is far the best tenure. It gives the same security of possession, and leaves all one's capital for improvements and stock. When we get the freehold the irst thing we do is to mortgage it for all we can. Yet a leasehold is a freehold, j with all the capital value borrowed from j the State. This country, sir, is suffering for the want of the liberal measures which gave poor men a chance to get on the land. Our armies of unemployed farmers walking off their lands and a ; general drift into the cities can be laid i at the door of a Government that has | not a shadow of a land settlement policy. | The family endowment pittance will lead | us nowhere. - It is a sort of a bribe for j votes, and the taxation to pay it •will ; come largely from those who are to get j it. It is a pity that the Labour party j can be caught by such a fraud. We who . have large families only ask for honest work and good wages. We don't wan* charity. Give us a good land settlement policy and the unemployed will disappear and prosperity return.—l am. etc., E. STEVENSON.