SALVATION IN SOILSOMETIMES!

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 10, 13 January 1932, Page 8

SALVATION IN SOILSOMETIMES!

"The of New Zealand's policy of not allowing the natives o£ this Cook Islands to sell their lands has been shown during the present depression/V says Judge Ayson. It is a policy to which New Zealand, in her own home country, has not always been steadfast. It is a policy, indeed, the success of which is dependent very largely on place, time, and circumstance. So long as a small piece of land on a tropic isle is capable of providing a simple living for an easily-satisfied individual or a family, with little call on labour and less call on capital and on technology, the native landholdings will be a sheet-anchor and a bulwark, against the starvation aspects of dc-

pression. So endowed, the native is slump-proof. But it is different where native land yields no return save by the application of labour-and capital beyond the capacity of the native owner. The working of average land to profit—land that has no subsistence point without considerable working—has not yet been accomplished, in temperate climates, by the Cook Islands method. In New Zealand a great experiment is now being tried in the special provision of credit— some of the credit funds being those of Maori beneficiaries—for the working of Maori lands in the interests of the Maoris. Much capital and much labour are involved, and much risk of loss. Among the problems is that of reconciling the Maori's claims as labourer with his claims as landowner; and it cannot be said that the ultimate, issue of the experiment is yet clear..', The Cook Islands situation is quite different. The Cook Islander is rich in what he has at his door, and still richer in what he has not. '■■■.- ' ■ '