HIGH RENTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 25, 30 January 1907, Page 3

HIGH RENTS.

TO TUB EDITOR. Sir, — The letter signed "Tenant" in this evening's PoEt indicates the pervading feeling of the community as regards the land question — a feeling of grave and growing dissatisfaction with the existing order of things without a perception of the remedy. Your correspondent hurls hard names at " landgrabbere " and " speculators," but even thc-e gentry are entitled to fair play, and it is 6urely tho height of unfairness to blame them for doing what the law allows and what every one else either does or would do. If the piipfite appropriation of rent is right — and we tacitly admit its justice by .allowing it — why blnzno those' who grow rich by it? If it is unjust, why allow it to exist? The case in point, 'granted by your correspondent," supplies the key to the whole problem. He tells -us that i " the property i s near a tram terminus." ! Let me ask " Tenant " if he thinks it j equitable that the landholder, and not the community, should receive the enhanced value consequent on tho laying cf ! the tram ? We of Henry "George's* school believe — or, more correctly, we know — • that the community-created -value, commonly called the unearned increment, belongs to the people. If it were taken for the people — and it can be taken by taxation whenever " Tenant " - and his fellows leirn sense enough, 'Mud! speculation would be gone for ever, fictitiout values would be impossible, arid th» country would progress to' an extent now undreamed of. " Tenant," with a simple faith that astounds one in these days of alleged education, appears to pin" his faith in tho co-called workers' home scheme of the Government. Allow ma to say that echemo is foredoomed to failure, for the reason that it is financially and economically unsound, and grossly inequitable as well.' It can never reduce rent, for to do that it must reduce land-valuee, and its tendency will be in the opposite direction. Those who will really benefit by the scheme will be the speculators, who will sell at fancy prices to tho Government, and, unless tho Government has perception enough to drop it in time, the result, -will bo that land will soon, become too dear to purchase. This 13 what has already happened in connection with the purchaso of estates for settlement, and herein lies tho real reason why Ministers have now introduced the Land Bill to effect that subdivision of estates which the Land for Settlements Act has signally failed to bring about. The justice and expediency of making a substantial increase to the land tax ia so apparent that ono would fancy that men with heads no bigger than door-knobs would have seen it ere this. I have a high opinion of the new Ministry, but I tell them -without hesitation that no amount of capacity will compensate for tho want of a bold nnd definite policy based on economic truth. Mr. M'Xab deservea every credit for lm persistency in pushing his Land Bill, but that meacuro doe not apply to urban lands at all, and: it does not, therefore, touch the vitah of th& land problem at nil. The endowment clauses r.re absolutely sound; but all that is sought by the balance of the Bill could be much more easily secured by an increase of the land-tax. S"uch a ttep may ba delayed, but its ultimate adoption 13 jas inevitable- as it is desirable. — I am, | ct °j- , P. J. O'REQAX. 26th January.