WELLINGTON CENTRAL

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 124, 21 November 1931, Page 14

WELLINGTON CENTRAL

MR. NICOLAUS AT GARRETT

STREET

The Citizens' National Movement candidate for Wellington Central, Mr. E. W. Nicolaus, held a well-attended open-air meeting at Garrott street last evening, when about 350 people were present. Although interjections were frequent, and at times lively, a vote of thanks and confidence in the speaker was carried almost unanimously.

Mr. Nicolaus drew attention to the great growth of land values in recent years, and pointed out that a sufficient reason for unemployment and bankruptcy was given by tho unbridled speculation in land since the war. He said "that every action tho Government claimed would lighten the burdens of tho farmers, such as the abolition of the graduated land tax, the derating of rural lands, subsidies to fertiliser manufacturers, the mortgagors' relief measure, and the providing of cheap labour was really a robbery of tho first magnitude of all the other sections of the community. The real object of these measures was not to benefit the farmer at all, but rather to enable him to pay the interest bill on his overvalued farm. It was much better, the speaker contended, that land values should rapidly fall in harmony with prices and wages than that they should be bolstered up at the cost of mining half the people of the country. If a tax of 6d in the & were imposed as a rent charge on all tho lands of the Dominion, not only would the price of 'and fall, but the revenue received would enable an intolerable burden of taxation to be removed from wages and industry. This policy was neither startling nor novel, said Mr. Nicolaus, as

it was already a plank in the platforms both of the Farmers' Union and of the Labour Party, but the influence of vested interests had evidently cowed them, for to-day not a word was said about iho taking of community created land values and using them for community needs. A chart showing that wages wcro stationary, that capital took a moderately increasing share, but that economic rent took a greatly preponderating and swiftly increasing share of tho national progress since 1890 was examined with interest.