Grey River Argus THURSDAY, December 9, 1926. THE ROCK TO SPLIT TORYISM.

Grey River Argus, 9 December 1926, Page 4

Grey River Argus THURSDAY, December 9, 1926. THE ROCK TO SPLIT TORYISM.

The land scandal has done more than burden the industrious classes of the Dominion with an incubus of debt and hardship they must carry for at least a century to come. It has lately issued in the spectacle of a public squabble between a leading Tory Cabinet Minister and a leading Tory newspaper. The Minister implies that the big city interests are out to exploit the working farmer right and left. The reply of the party journal is that, while the Minister is an able critic of the evil land policy in vogue, he has no ability to rectify it. There is a lot of truth in what both say. There is a. saying that when some people fall out, others get a square deal. An evil legacy, however, has bepn the Reform square deal, now that a split is coming in consequence of the monopolists landing the. country in a serious difficulty. The Tory policy has always been one of land monopoly and the fattening of the big importers, and those are the classes who have backed and used the Reform Party. Half a century ago the squatter class were fighting to have land freed of tax and improvements alone mulcted, enabling 1096 of them to hold no less Ihanjiiueteen million acres. To-day the reflex of that monopoly includes £280,000,000 of land mortgages, three-fifths of which, is value that is really fictitious, but upon which tribute must yearly be paid the monopolists out of the produce of the labour of those who work the land. Money that should have gone to develop the country is mopped up by the monopolists, making to-day a small but exceedingly wealthy party, just as there used to be fifty years since, while the rest of

’ the community find it difficult te make ends meet. When such swindles as grid-ironing and spotting no longer permit land to be held, just as it can no longer be grabbed from Maoris for a bottle of whisky or a stick of tobacco the monopolists secure their hole by having their political bench men remit their taxation, ane place it on the food, clothing sports, amusements, and other re quisites of the masses. Since 191'. the land legislation has favourec tbe squattocraey and brough about the insecurity and chaos o to-day, when the Tory Minister of Lands says there is no way out and when he is denounced by hi: own party press as possessing m policy. The country is now pay ing interest on fictitious land nil ues to the extent of over two hun dred millions. The recipients ar t rendered able to retain their cloin inant position by the fact that th- . people whom they exploit in ; thousand ways are not united ii self-defence. If they could co operate to the extent of endin monopoly only, it would make vast difference in the distributio of wealth. The workers would ge more and could spend more, an the producers could sell mon and thus enjoy more of what the do produce, instead of earmarkin every second sheep, or dedicatin every other pound of butter, o working two days out of every si in order to fatten the bank ba anees of the plutocrats who liar been plucking the country fc

more than seven decades past, is time the public awakened to tl fact that, as things are, they a in the main, working for only favoured few.