Land and the Landless.

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 2499, 9 November 1914, Page 2

Land and the Landless.

Wiiat of land questions? Will a Ministry which is supposed to have ! the landocracy at its back do anyt thing against the landowner and for | -the landless? These are questions the Man in the Street looked up first thing in the Massey manifesto. Well, the Government gives answers full and large and interesting, for its land plank is labelled: "Land for the people and people for the land." It believes in the maintenance of the freehold principle, which encourages owners to improve their property, increasing tho yield, while. maintaining the land in good heart." It will go in for the development of a sturdy, selfreliant yeomanry by special attention to the bona fide settlement of small areas of good land. It will go on promoting the subdivision of large estates which are suitable for close settlement, by an automatic increase of the graduated tax. This policy will be exercised with a just and sane discrimination between land which is improved and improvable land which is kept in an unimproved condition. It_ is also necessary to have fair discrimination between land which is fit for agricultural and dairying purposes, and comparatively poor pastoral land which cannot bo profitably occupied in small areas. "The basis of this policy is a taxation of any large landholders' inertia or indifference to New Zealand's needs." ty is to be hoped that the legislation on graduated lines will not contain gaps oig enough for the legal "coach °and four" to drive through, for the graduated land tax strictly applied is the panacea for all aggregation evils. Like the Opposition Party, the Government is up to date with a proposal for the establishment of agricultural and land banks, to minimise tho financial anxieties of settlers and to enable them to hasten tho development of their land for the benefit of themselves and tho whole community. Germany, Italy, and U.S.A. have found these banks wholly successful for the man on the land; and thenis no doubt they would prove beneficial and popular in our Dominion. There aro numerous other items in the very lengthy programme set before electors, providing ample material for the coming campaign of Mr Guthrie; just as the just-issued policy of the Opposition provides Mr Morrison with pabulum for his platform speeches. And it must be highly satisfactory to the electors of Feilding and district that there is to be a worth-while contest for tho Oroua seat between representatives of each political party. The fight will be a fair one and strenuous; and with a policy manifesto from each side, both candidates and electors will know all the rules and issues of tho political game that is now in play.