The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1926. THE DRIFT TO THE TOWNS.

Evening Star, Issue 19408, 17 November 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1926. THE DRIFT TO THE TOWNS.

Over twenty years ago the Seddon Government set up a Land Commission. The burning question then was tenure—freehold or leasehold—and the treatment of Crown tenants. it was then the fashion to believe that on tenure hinged the successful settlement of the land. That idea, if not altogether exploded, has receded far into the background by now. But reference to the debates of those days shows' that the conditions attributed by freeholders and leaseholders alike to the form of tenure they disliked were much the same as those now creating concern on the part of our present administrators and others interested in land settlement. “How many square miles' of first-class land are there remaining in the hands of the Crown?” asked the late Mr Hogg in Parliament in 1904. “ What is left of the fine lands of this country that the people require for cultivation? Only the shoddy remnant of a huge garment.” During the same debate the late Mr Jennings declared that a few years previously, when there had been depression in New Zealand, the whole object of the Government had been to get people on the land quite irrespective of its suitability for close settlement. The present Government has learned from, experience, and the Minister of Lands was one of the prominent men at a meeting at Auckland last night at which a resolution was passed advocating that a Board of Inquiry, with power to call evidence, should he set up forthwith to ascertain the conditions that are preventing the profitable occupation of land already in occupation and retarding the settlement of the undeveloped lands of New Zealand, with a view to their removal. Mr M'Leod subsequently said that he did not wish to have a largo and expensive committee travelling about the country. A practical farmer himself, he wishes to see the committee manned by representative farmers. Thus, if the proposal comes to anything, it need not bo feared that there will be a repetition of the Land Commission of over twenty years ago, either in respect of its personnel or the amount of money it cost the country.

Meanwhile economists have been investigating the drift from country to town which has been becoming pronounced in New Zealand. To the September issue of the ‘Highway,’ the journal, of the Workers’ Educational Association of New Zealand, Professor Fisher contributed an article in which the following passage occurs:—“lnstead of deploring the urban drift, we ought to rejoice at the evidence which it affords that the primary necessities of the whole population can bo supplied by a steadily diminishing proportion of the people.” The facts are that New Zealand is growing in population more rapidly than almost any other civilised country, and it is im-

portant that our development should be along such lines as will keep the largest number of people most happily and most usefully and most profitably employed. One would assume that in a young land like this such employment would be found in the country rather than in the town. But there has been a considerable fall in the proportion of people employed in primary production and a very substantial increase in the proportion following employments at best only indirectly < productive, and notably in one or other of the State services. The complacency with which Professor Fisher views this change is not shared by other thinkers whom the editor of the * Highway' asked for an expression of opinion. Mr W. A. Sheat, in particular, stresses the folly of ignoring the reality of the problem which is growing up in this country, which might by an adverse turn of our markets he speedily rendered a very acute one. “Suitable land available for settlement,” he writes, “is rapidly becoming scarcer. Indeed, much capital has been wasted jn settling land that should never have been settled. Great areas of this have been abandoned in recent years. It is well known that a drop of 10 per cent, in export prices would compel the abandonment of hundreds of farms.” On the other hand, he asserts that “any apparent increase in the prosperity of the primary industries brings little improvement in the conditions of the general body of active primary producers. Too often it results merely u a rise in land values, a change in the ownership of many farms, and a rise in the rent and interest bills carried by the primary industries.” This unsatisfactory state of affairs tends to accentuate the disproportion between urban and rural populations. “ Conditions in the country, especially for those with small capital, have recently been so precarious that many men of this class who previously would have aimed at establishing themselves in a farming venture to-day prefer to risk their resources in some business in the towns. Hence the rapid multiplication of small businesses in the towns and the practical stagnation of land settlement throughout the country. The necessary distributive services are not as a result performed more efficiently, hut more wastefully than they were ten or fifteen years ago. The number of those who ‘ get a cut’ out of the produce grows steadily greater, the typical country town becomes more and more parasitic upon the active producer, while the financial burdens of the latter become so hopeless that his main object is only too often to escape to the towns at any cost.” Professor Murphy evidently regards this picture as overdrawn, characterising it as “the wail of the speculative small farmer who, having contracted to buy land at a figure that no sensible man would ever have discussed, is now anxious to hack out of his bargain, blame the other fellow as being his oppressor, and demand that the community should save him from the consequences of his own folly and greed.” He takes the view that the farming community is tangled in its own bonds rathon than in the grip of the financial octopus. But whichever view is right there can be no dispute that the real reason for the drift of population to the towns is the difficulty of making farms pay. That, again, may be due to lack of markets abroad, caused chiefly by lowered standards of living there and increasing competition with us on the part of countries like the Argentine and Russia. According to the report of the Imperial Economic Committee this competition in the United Kingdom market is likely to become more severe in the next few years, and all the committee can recommend to the New Zealand primary producer is to improve his methods of production so as reduce costs without touching wages or reducing his standard of living, so that he may hold his own even though market prices should fall substantially. The alternative seems to be to go out of production. If the townward trend is to be taken as an indication that this is happening, then one wonders what will be New land’s future.