LAND AND TAXATION

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 78, 29 September 1930, Page 10

LAND AND TAXATION

(To the Editor.) •Sir,—Mr. P. J. O'Began (vide his letter m your issue of 24th September re Paremata bridge) gives further illustration of the man, honestly . believing himself to be a Radical or Socialist, who still clings tenaciously to ancient Tory ideals. Tory England of a century back niado land alone directly responsible for cost of. many necessities and utilities, nowspread over a wide field of taxing, until to-day even cost of road upkeep is almost entirely removed as' a direct charge from rural or farm lands. The growth of maritime, mercantile, and industrial England, devouring wealth as it did largely" from land^caused .enlightened men, under an ever-widening franchise, to gradually enlarge fields of taxation. Thinkers, statesmen, and even politicians throughout the world to-day are seeking solution of a problem so concisely put by a writer in a recent London "Times" trade publication, in the following sentence: "Want of relativity between the emoluments of the primary industries and those of the secondary industries is the real cause of present stagnation of trade." Hoover, in the last United States Presidential election, carried the polls with a platform the chief plank of which was "Equality, for Agriculture," with a promise of up to a hundred millions sterling —not dollars—from the public purse to assist to that end. Canada has recently seen swept from office a Government and party not prepared, apparently, to adequately adjust the intolerable position of primary producers. In Australia, arbitration awards, minimum wage, guild agreements, ' gentlemen's understandings, are tottering before a force which as yet means ingenuity has failed to direct or control. Still my old friend Mr. P. J. O'Began's cure is more direct taxation on land; and seemingly in that opiniou he in this country is being backed up by a Government sticking its head in the sand, crying out: "Australia's position can never be outs."—l am, etc., ■ ' A. D. M'LEOD.' ■YYaharapa, 27tlt September.