LAND PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 13

LAND PROBLEM.

bought but not paid for

COUNTRY OP FAWNED FARMS.

HOW SETTLERS ARE BURDENED.

(By TOUCHSTONE.)

(No. V.)

Every now and then some dear old gentleman at a meeting of one or other of the various financial institutions that inn the great Reform party, which in turn runs us, gets up and delivers a nice little address telling us how silly and extravagant we are to buy motor ears, gramophones and what not on time payment, instead of saving up our pennies and giving them to these dear old gentlemen to play with in their institutions.

It is comforting to think we have a Government in office that thinks about our welfare in these matters. It is not as if they had done nothing but talk either, for to make poor people economical, they have put up the Customs duty on motor cars, though, naturally, as the rich man can afford a motor ear they cut the Customs duty down heavily on expensive cars. We ought sorely all to be very prosperous and happy under Reform rule. Tet somehow or other we are not. Why is this, one wonders?

The fact of the matter is that the great invincible Reform party is a little absent-minded. In its good advice abont being economical it has forgotten low dreadfully extravagant we have become in buying land. Land, of course, ia rather a delicate subject with the great Reform party. It has a handful of very good friends who own quite a little land, somewhere about half of New Zealand in fact, and as a sort of fire insurance to keep the rest of us off that land these good friends of the Reform party are generally understood to giro a lot of money toward paying for tkoae handsome advertisements at election time telling us to be sure to vote for Sing and country and the landlord •ad Mr. Coatee.

; The fact of the matter is that this (quitter's tail has so waggled the Reform dog during the past Id years that pleas we have had a rich uncle leave na a fortune about the only way we get hold of a bit of farm land nowadays is en the time-payment plan. You can get to the end of the time payments on a motor oar, but there are quite a lot of na in New Zealand who will require to be monkey-glanded several times over fcyDr. Voronoff if we are to live long enoogh to see the end of the time payjuata on the land wo. occupy. When a motor car you don't expect to spend the whole of the rest of your Hfe working for the motor car manufacturer and living on the smell of an e&riag youreelf. But, after the way the Btform party has worked the land business in this country, that ia just about Viiat yon have to do if you want to be atomer.

Mortgage Figure*. If fra. turn up the mortgage statistic* job will find that every year the famsr iaowing more on his land than Wwm the Tear before. And the* only <im ihe Beionn party can think of is to Mp him to borrow more yet, so as togethis head* right under. Then they cairt make out ,wny on earth the boys <woot itay on the-farm', bnt streak for ttetowa|to .hnnt .a job there. In some dib V«W 'England States in America they have got their farming into the ■MM sort, of mess that the Reform party ours -into. - They have noticed quite a Jot of • things about those New England boyaleaving for town; the.ones that atfy/'on: the farms, they say, are the ooes who are too dull and stupid to mm, or'too-lasy and unenterprising to e|re» how they are being made to> pay fir'aero than a fair thing for the use «f the land. That is the fine broad /•IPM to ruin that is being built at a PRttv npid rate by the Reform party b New Zealand.

Talking about America is a reminder ttat they have mortgage statistics in test country that you can make head •nd tail of. Perhaps that is because tfy tte not afraid of their mortgage •tttiftka. Onr Coates Government has pt~ «o afield of ours—they are enough fo rtiM'anybody's hair—that they have •nt; ei& ratting in the total in the Ofidal Year JJook." 'However, you get ;it by doing a little The Reformers frill tell the figures . have been dropped ■Wsme they are all wrong.- They said wflgnres about there being fewer men y {the./ bad .were all wrong, and the about; there being fewer farms inoccupation were all wrong too. If uw Reform party would dig a bit more fcjjJy into the year book it would find lo nmdi there all wrong from its point « ykw that we might very soon hear from motives of economy it had toft decided to discontinue this unpleattattodk.

tie' United States they collect the farm | mortgage statistics every five SJMK According to the 1925 figures WW (are 6,371,000 farms in the United Statjs,' the average area of the farms Jwagj 145 acres. We have 85,600 farms Zealand with an average area! &«>ov acres.' • The total value of the f® »nds and buildings in the United 15 was P u ' 49,467 million dollars, Md the average per farm at 7764 jgfsy (£1552). Of these farms, two •Jfcef every three have no .mortgage on I m*-' and the farms that are mortgaged' e#l Ty"aa average mortgage debt of no ® P er °* their value, j? * United States Census Bureau pubthe farm mortgage debt in put at 16.9 per cent of the all farms. The figure for 1925 j&£°t in the literature at but comparison of the mortgage M'scs of ,1925 with those of 1920 that it probably stood at • 2Si n a nd 19 per cent. How, the will ask, do the New Zealand The answer is that . we are * n U P to our necks, it ,m P° B8 *ble to get at any exact - , ® ur mortgages statistics are, _po»gible, rottener than our mortgage fb'n.. . B rown to be since the ReitMj Mdier settlement , enterprise n "P b y doubling the total on the I ' re gister ' n nine years. li>ij er^:? re Wo places to find New ZeaMrt % ures - One is in the re- : Wr^iiit' i an( * Transfer Office, and *bich i!* ' n land-tax statistics, P °' the situation. It ** a t make the total up to too much, as not fc' ht «? es discharged are thought 'wSLs?' diß ® har g e registered, and lift*.- k. :JJ 8 mortgage is over lands in fo -rt&eV k 0 ! 16 -^' 8 * T ' c t the whole amount tiiii if's; i ,n eac " district. Against *f • ttiit. „*Pown that there are numbers IfcllKl mortgages. On April • capital value of land and j? New Zealand, town and ttd all, was £618,000,000. On

I ? 27 T the before-then n mortgages on the re2 er J k l !! d transfer and deeds registration combined) was £293,000,000. The otall mortgages as thus shown are equal to £47 on every £100 worth of land in *5 Awa y back in 1882, when Mr. William Rolleston said the only finrt 1V * h ® could see in Ne w Zelr3T aS Us to be either tenants of the Crown or tenants of the moneylenders, there was only a mortgage of SJ T °" ev , e P; flo ° worth of lanl in a fiyf year 1911 was Tl,* ™? gage , °n every £100 : of land. SSff t d f jumped U per *100 ism TW % eDty years of Liberalism. These figures are of mortoaues under the Land Transfer Act only, the r ® gls^atlon figures not being i n - ln , earlier statistics. The JSS at D fJ ranSfer A ° fc mort S a ge total X 0D - ? very £10 ° w °rth of land in the Dominion. Thus while mortgages jumped £4 per £100 of land in 20 L ea «p^ Un Liberalism, they jumped £14 ~ f™ years under Reform, and £11 Mttfemetl\ JUmP f ollo^ ed ° n soldier settlement boom, m which Reform spent milhons upon millions of the public's money in buying land at any old price landowners liked to ask. P I

Burden on Rural Land. That is what the figures show as to town and country mortgages generally. Now we will see what we can make out as to the state of farm mortgages. Smce 1916 the new Land Transfer mortgages registered have been sorted out into town and country, but not the discharges. If we add up the new mortgages each year we shall find that we ?oo£ f a y e to g ,° back ei S ht years from 1927 to have a bigger total of new mortgages registered than the grand total of mortgages on the register in 1927. As most flat mortgages are for five or six years and table mortgages usually run a good deal longer, this does not make it look as if the mortagage total is much of an exaggeration of the position, however unpleasant it may be for the Reform party to see this evidence <of its handiwork in cold print. ° ur addition sum will also disclose that of the amount registered in the eight years 60 per cent represented country mortgages. The grand total of mortgages on March 31, 1928, was £302,000,000, so on a 60 per cent basis the farmers' share of this would be £181,000,000. The latest figure showing the capital value of country land is for 1927, and puts it at £349,000,000. The official figures thus lead to the conclusion that on every £100 worth of rural land In the Dominion there is to-day a mortgage of £51. This is slightly different from the American figure of £18 or £19 of mortgage on every £100 worth of farm land. As a lot of our big estates are .clear of mortgages this means that Reform's free trade in land has put the cockie in up to his neck, and made him little more than a slave to the money-lenders. He is in so deep that in many. cases he can never get clear. How many of our small farmers are in the condition pictured by Mr. Seddon when he spoke on the Land Bill of 1892? Here is what Mr. Seddon said:—"Let us look at the effect of a man buying land and mortgaging it. What is he doing? If he has a family hs lands them in trouble and difficulty. They work on the land year after year; they work from { early morning till late at night; the sons and daughters help their father and mother; and what is happening all the timet., The interest goes out J month, after. month to the money-1 lender, and ih the end a bad season comes—bad crops, low prices—the interest is not met. The mortgagee forecloses and takes possession; and the man, disgusted with himself, sinks into the grave, leaving his children to find themselves as we know by sad experience . . . turned out into th 6 street." i

That is one side of the picture. But there is naturally another side. If the farmers have huge interest bills to meet somebody has the pleasure ,of receiving the money. At first that money goes out to a great many people of all sorts and kinds, but when, yon have a whole countryside deep in debt the wealth that should be evenly distributed among all tends to concentrate year by year in fewer and fewer hands'. Already we have had produced among us by Reform Government a large and growing class of lilies of the field that toil not neither do' they spin. How do these idlers who ride on the farmers' backs spend their time? We have to go to our Minister of Finance, Mr. Downie Stewart, for the answer. This country, Mr. Downie Stewart - told the .'business men of Auckland some months back, is afflicted with "a leisured class; who are capable of assisting in the public affairs of the country, but refuse to take their part: content apparently to take an occasional trip to the Sydney races and to criticise those who do the country's work." . . . But perhaps our leisured class have excellent reasons for sticking to poker, racing and golf to while away the time between signing receipts for'their interest. Haven't they every reason to feel that all they could ever do for. themselves politically is already being done for them by their friends in-the Reform party?