LLOYD GEORGE LAND REFORM.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1914, Page 4

LLOYD GEORGE LAND REFORM.

Berhaps the most interesting feature of* Mr. Lloyd George's rural land policy, outlined at Swindon, is that it treats both of wages and rents. Not only is the agricultural labourer to have a living wage, but the tenant farmer is to be -/allowed, if necessary, an abatement of 'rent in order, that he may pay that living wage. The close correlation of wages andy rents and prices is one of the mosW familiar economic facts, and it is yet one of the most frequently ignored. Instances of this have been abundantly provided in the proceedings of our own Arbitration Court. If tho conditions of industry are to be fixed by,' award, one cannot logically stop at wages and hours, and ignore prices and rents; and the pertinent question has been frequently asked whether, if the Arbitration Court prescribes what a manufacturer shall pay in wages, it should not also fix the balance .between his cost of production and his selling price. Mr. Lloyd George's proposal does not go as far as this, but it does aim at fixing a rent that will enable a farmer I to pay a fixed minimum wage. If our j Arbitration Court were to proceed tomorrow to deal with the conditions of i rural labourers, it would have no power to touch rents, and might also refuse to ] even consider them ; so in this respect Mr. Lloyd George's proposal goes a big step beyond anything we have attempted in our so-called political experimental garden. No doubt many economists Will recall the price-fixing and rent-adjusting | failures of history, and will contend that i the prescribed wages and rents of the Lloyd Georgian scheme will avail nothing against the laws of supply and demand. But this -and similar arguments, if they are good, are at least equally good against New Zealand's statutory wagefixing machine. Indeed, we do know that much of our awarded wage-increases have been swallowed up by rising prices and rents, and that real wages is an altogether different thing from the minimum wage. Mr. Lloyd George, on the other hand, would follow up the wageincrease through the rent and thus make it a charge against the landlord and, the land itself. If he is wrong, he is not more wrong than our own system that prescribes wages but not rents.' On tho other hand, ho has a great deal more chance than we have of being right. In any case, he is a daring experimenter ,• and his ideas are in step with the fair rent courts of the Australian Labour party and with others who have dared to attempt to take a legislative grip of the natural laws of supply and demand. Next to this " power to grant an' abatement of rent to enable a farmer to pay labourers a living wage," the most interesting feature of Mr. Lloyd George's scheme is the housing. Here in New Zealand we have a few hundred workers' homes, but what would wo think of undertaking to have 120,000 newTiouses built for agricultural labourers and others ! The figures are stupendous. Proportionately to population, that scale would give us about 3000 workers' homes. These houses are to be let at "an economic rent," which presumably means that their rentals must pay interest on the cost of construction. Now, the agricultural labourer's wage must be big enough to allow him to live and pay "the economic rent"; and the rent paid by the tenant farmer must be small enough to allow him to pay the labourer the wage that is to cover " the economic rent"; and therefore the landlord must be content with a tent that will permit of this being done. If Kir. Lloyd George really nails the landlord, he will have accomplished a wonderful feat, but one's dubiety on .this point need 'not detract from hia admiration for a man who offers such a bold specific to conservative Britain. Another interesting point is the financing of the cost of construction of the houses. The capital will be taken out of the Insurance Reserve Fund. Under the much-criticised Insurance Act, that fund is built up by the contributions of the insured employees and those of the employers, assisted by the State. Thus the insured workmen are to find tho capital for the building of the agricultural labourers' homes] and tho agricultural labourers, through their "economic rents," are to find the interest on the capitat of the insured workmen and thus increase the latter's benefits. A man who is insured and who is also tenant of one of these rural homes, will therefore be helping to find both the capital and the interest. Paradoxical though it may appear, the workmen will be lending to themselves. Effect is to bo given to the scheme by means of some novel and attractive machinery. Briefily, it concentres in a Ministry of Lands many great powers, which are to bo operated through Commissions of a judicial character. Among -other things, they will havo large jurisdiction in adjusting matters between landlord and tenant, and there. Will be power to acquire land ; which is of course a necessary thing, and a desirable ono, so long as it does not lend to the delusion that the agrarian evil can be settled by landpiiichase. This Ministry of Lands will bo a much more comprehensive affair than the New Zealand Lands Department. It will include the all-important machinery of valuation, the registration of titles and laud transfers, and certain administrative work now in tho handb of the. Court of Chancery. Altogether, Mr. Lloyd George has extracted a fine old I'dttU from t-lia thy bo»e» «?i Jievm gland's lftn^.ptoblfimi (