CHANCELLOR AND THE LAND.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, 1 August 1912, Page 6

CHANCELLOR AND THE LAND.

A RURAL PROGRAMME. GREAT LANDLORDS TO QUIT. A programme of land reform was recently outlined in the “Nation,” tlie leading Liberal weekly. “It should,” it says, “include a living wage for the laborer, a decent house for him to live in, land enough to afford him, first-, an alternative resource to his labor, and, eventually, full occupation, a system of transit adapted to tlie effective marketing of his produce, and a sensible relief of fating.

“These reforms are practically a call for a new rural society, involving the final disappearance of the great landlord and the system of large enclosed farming on which his power is based. His special form of economy is fast' turning our countryside into a ranch and a gams preserve;-the most salient spectacle of social waste that Europe affords. If, is time for him to go, and time for Liberal statesmanfimp to give him fair notice to qut. The countryside is empty. The land cries out for labor, and labor cries out for land.

“But,” adds the “Nation,” “'the land question, though it has often been agitated, has never been solved, nor lias any substantial progress bo: made wit-h three closely attendant questions—the wage question, the housing problem, and the rating question. . . . But the most definite

need of the hour is to raise the wlio'e problem of the condition of the rural worker in a definite, dramatic, and substantial form.

FOUR MAIN SOCIAL EVILS. “Four main social evils, afflict bis life. The first is his dependence, economic and personal; the second his low wage; the third his landlessness; the fourth the deplorable way in which he is housed. And all these evils are related to each other- The laborer is dependent because be lias no choice of house-room and no resource save that of labor. His wages are low, because (among other reasons) he lacks the power or the habit of combination. He is badly housed, because his wages are so- inadequate that he cannot afford an economic rent for a ■decent dwelling. Therefore-, he wants, first, to be roused to a sense of the sufferings and the wants of bis condition. and then to be assured of .powerful aid against those classes who, often quite unconsciously, oppress him and the system .which those classes represent. “It was a misfortune that this duty of building up a new agricultural society was not initiated by the inclusion of agricultural land in the Budget of 1909. “Pratcically, two solutions of the rural housing question are possible. Tlie State can step in with its credit and its resources, as it lias stepped in in Ireland, or it can make the rural landlord responsible for tlie deficiency of house-room, and -call on him to make it good. The wages of tlie agricultural laborer in the East and West and South of England are at least 2o per cent below what they ought to be, and if any extension is to be made to the machinery of the Wages Board Act it- Should be for his benefit. But the laborer wants land, and land is not coming -liis way," as it lias come to the Irish cotter, who -started thirty years ago from a lower standard of life than, his, and is now the virtual or the coming owner of most of the soil of Ireland.”