LAND AND MONETARY REFORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 102, 2 May 1935, Page 23

LAND AND MONETARY REFORM.

"Once Bitten, Twice Shy," implies that the analogy between monetary reformpresumably meaning thereby the Douglas proposals —and the pernicious "gamble" in land of a few years back is so strong that, in the event of such proposals being given effect to, the country would immediately revert to those extravagant days. Not necessarily so. There is no need for "Once Bitten" to recapitulate the old, old story of how thousands sunk their savings into house and farm properties. If those folks would only be honest enough to acknowledge their mistake in overthrowing the leasehold system of 20 years ago, and substituting, through their political sponsors, the so-called freehold system, it would relievo the monotony of what wc get dished up almost daily. The Government of the day, under the late .Mr. Alassey, were, as "Once Bitten" su<™»ests, the worst, or about the worst, offenders in creating the boom. They had a great chance, and missed it, being too busy equipping an expeditionary force to give much thought to future economic developments. What they should have done early in the piece was to pass an enactment making it prohibitive for any person to sell, transfer, or otherwise dispose of farm properties for a period of at least three years, then we should not have had the spectacle of land being turned over and over ten times, each time at a profit, until some poor benighted souls fell in the soup when the markets crashed. J. ORR.