The Press Thursday, January 2, 1930. The Land Tax.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19816, 2 January 1930, Page 10

The Press Thursday, January 2, 1930. The Land Tax.

On Tuesday morning we printed the last instalment of the Stock and Station Agent's Diary which has been appearing day by day on this page since the beginning of ' December. Although the writer of the Diary had by no means exhausted the material in his possession—it was never his, or our, intention that all his " cases " should be given—he had shown so clearly what the Government's policy involves that it did not seem necessary to carry the story into the New Year. It is perhaps not known to most of our readers that this Diary has been widely quoted in other parts of the Dominion, and even, in one or two cases, reprinted in full. It has not therefore been the voice of one man crying in the wilderness, or even of many men crying out in one province, but a lamentation which needed only a few alterations to be the expression of the whole farming community. Indeed, the very first paper to take notice of it, and reprint it so far as it had then gone — we think a full week —was the Auckland Herald, whose farmer readers are by no means of the same class as those of The Press; and even if they had been the similarity in conditions would not extend to Palmerston North and Nelson, which have also taken notice of the Diary and quoted it in full or in part. It is therefore clear already that if the hardship clause is not administered with the utmost liberality, the result will be something that the Government neither expected nor will have the courage to face. Even if the Government does face the facts, as we hope it will, and stretches the hardship clause to lengths which the Act never contemplated, the situation of many farmers will be quite hopeless. For example, not one of the twenty-eight cases which have been quoted on this page has been seriously challenged—wo think that only one has been so much as questioned —and it would have been almost as easy to print 82 as 28 from the books ,of this Agent alone. We would in fact never have printed any, or been supplied with any, if the Government had not made the foolish statement, and repeated it, that the opposition to its proposal was merely a sham agitation which was being carefully stagemanaged. To that charge there was only one answer, and we gave it—specific cases from the actual records of a reputable firm handling the accounts of farmers of all classes. There are a dozen such firms in Canterbury, and dozens more in Otago, Wellington, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki, and Auckland. Yet we qnoted from the books of one only, and from that one those eases only which had distinctive features. It is not necessary to say any more —except convey thanks, on behalf of all farmers, to the Agent who took the trouble to compress their misfortunes into these pungent histories.