HOLDINGS AND VALUES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 142, 16 June 1923, Page 6

HOLDINGS AND VALUES

A speech made by the chairman of a bank to shareholders in annual meeting should not be the mere off-hand expression of individual opinion, but a carefully-con-sidered and well-weighed statement. Sir George Elliot, Chairman of the Bank of "New Zealand, yesterday, iv suggesting that demands on the Government for the

opening up of fresh areas of unoccupied lands should not be listened to- for the time being, was probably expressing the views of the directors of the bank, based on information that comes to banks through the avenues of information open to them. Those avenues are various and many, when it is considered that it is a small community indeed that has not an agency, if not a branch, in its midst. It is evident that the Bank of New Zealand directorate is fully convinced that the holdings of acres by some farmers are far too many for them. Indeed, this view was stated by Sir George Elliot to have been based upon information supplied by practical farmers. Smaller holdings that can carry with greater profit more productive dairy stock than they are now feeding would not only materially lighten the burden of the mort-gage-ridden farmer who, in many cases, is hardly earning interest, if, indeed, he is doing so at all. Sir George Elliot does not suggest means by which holdings can be reduced or their productivity increased—excepting in the matter of importing high-producing stock; but the suggestion is one that the Government can well give heed to, and, if found necessary, devise practicable methods of giving effect to it. It is manifestly desirable, in the present conditions, that where communications are already in existence land areas should be of such dimensions as to afford the utmost carrying capacity, in population and production, before the expense of opening up unoccupied territory should be undertaken.