Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 1,1911. FARMERS AND THE FREEHOLD

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 27, 1 August 1911, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1911. FARMERS AND THE FREEHOLD

The Farmers' Union, of course, t»Mains true to the article of its political creed, which often seema to be the principal object of it« existence. The right of every Crown tenant to purchase the fee simple of his holding is proclaimed on every possible occasion, and it was in accordance with custom that at the Dominion Conference of the union irhich met in Wellington last week the first item on the order-paper after th« presidential address was a repetition of this incessant demand. But though the demand is always being pressed, its fflfflfl. is not constant, That every tenant shall have the option to ptttchaes tile freehold, and that the right shall be made retrospective, so as to cover leases already in existence, including even those of endowment lands— -these are points which are never varied. They raise in the simplest form the question whether the whole of bo fundamental an asset as the public estate of the country should, be gradually Whittled ' away, and whether even the trusts created in favour of such essential objects as education and old-age pensions should be violated. The earmarking of 7,000,000 acres of Crown land as an endowment for these purposes was an excellent idea, which maie the retaining Of this land, for the State a much easier matter than it had previously been. For hospitals, colleges, and schools land is Assuffietl on all hands to be the most desirable form of endowment. Why should not the same principle apply to that part of the educational system for which the State continues to be directly responsible? The chief objection taken to the policy is that the endowment is too small 15 be adequate to the object in view. It is strange logic that, because it is too late to make complete provision on the lines proposedi no provision at all shall be made, and everybody knows perfectly well that those who are raising this objection would' have been still louder in their opposition if the Bame policy had been instituted years ago on a scale that might then have been much larger and \ perhaps completely adequate. Into such details as the distinction betweea the endowment lands and those which have not been set aside in trust the Conference of the Farmers' Union did not enter. It was content to formulate a general demand for the alienation of every acre of Crown land at the option of the tenant, and we are glad to see that the terms upon which this alienation is demanded are such that the pub* lie conscience can never consent to them. Thousands of men who do not share one rooted objection on principle to the dissipation of the public estate object just as strongly as we do to the alienation of the land on inequitable terms. The Conference reaffirmed the demand which has been embodied in its platform, viz., "that Crown tenants on the lease-in-per-petuity tenure have the right to acquire the freehold of their holding on payment by the lessee of the original value and the payment of the difference between the 4 per cent, now charged on the leasein*j>erpetuity and the 5 per cent, charged to tenants with right4o-pur-chase." That this audacious demand should be repeated yea* by year is astonishing, and the audacity and the wonder increase every year, for every year's delay makes the proposal to sell at the original value more outrageous. Some of these petpetnal leases are now neatly twenty years old, and the proposal would give th© tenants the benefit of the enormous advance of the unimproved value dtneinf that period. Mr. A. h. DFfMef* «*-M,l\ > who vca» » m»mb«t pi

the* Oooferen«e^«ifttecr that to p&it with ibei freehold on these teraa would mean giving the fortunate leaseholders J34,000,000 of th 6 peepte'e money. In reply, Mr. F. Hocfely e&id that if tet. Fttuter took up one of thee« sections, and put ia fche best twenty ye*w oi his lite on it, he would feel at the end that every penny of th& increased value of the kftd belonged to him. This Js surely a (strange way of bringing biased &ad unreasoning sentiment in the determination of what should be a purely business problem. Two years ago the farmers' Union, or some of its branches, talked of an actuarial valuation as that on which the purchase money should be assessed. If the freehold is to b& cold at all, that mr4y is the b«i» on which to proceed. But from our point of view it is iatis!a«tory that the union should now be repeating the unjust demand which must make sucG6BB impossible.