N.Z. FARMERS

Grey River Argus, 1 April 1935, Page 6

N.Z. FARMERS

AND TORY LEGISLATION. Writing in the N.Z. Worker, J. T. says: The recent Dairy Commission summarised what occurred in the following statement: “The total number of farm holdings in the land district of Taranaki .s 6,326, with an aggregate area of 1,211,808 acres of improved land. From 1918 to 1923 inclusive 6,428 transfers of rural properties were registered—a number equal to the present holdings in the district and embracing a total area of over 1,000,000 acres. From 1918 to the present date, 12,386 transfers have been registered for the district, embracing approximately 2,000,000 acres.’’

The Reform Party took office in 1912 and was thrown out in 1928. While it held power there was an orgie of land speculation and mortgages were piled up mountains high. After 1912 the first major piece of legislation enacted by the Reform Party virtually abolished the lease-in-perpetuity tenure in favour of what was glorified as the “freehold.” In this the Reform Party had the farmers among its most enthusiastic supporters. The “freehold” tempted people to buy land not primarly to cultivate it for a living, but to sell it at a profit. The gambling debauch thus began. In 1919 —the year following the war—the Reform Party was responsible for another enactment which soon gave a hectic complexion to speculative operations affecting land. It spent £14,500.000 of the surpluses accumulated by Sir Joseph Ward when Finance Minister during the war on the purchase of land at exorbitant prices for the settlement of the soldiers. Sir Joseph (Hansard Vol. 184, Sept. 30, 1919) declared that this legislation would face the soldiers with “financial ruin,” would force them to “go off the land every year or two,” and “would murder the men.” He pleaded for a “reasonable valuation” before purchase. But the money was spent and the soldiers “settled.” Land prices soared, selling became a mania, and in conjunction with the post-war commodities boom, transfers of land, at alarming values, rapidly took place. Land agents were in clover. Mortgage financiers jostled with loans to stimulate the evil process. How astounding the position became is indicated by the following authentic figures:—When the Reform Party took charge in 191.2 the capital value of the land of New Zealand was |315,503,000, and the registered mortgages totalled £88.500,000. When the Reform Party left office in 1928 the capital value of the land of Dfew Zealand was £618,264,000, but the registered mortgages totalled £302.500,000. Tn the 16 years the Reform Party held office capital land value increased 921 per cent., mortgage liability increased 242 per cent. In 1928 the total interest bill on the £302,000,000 of mort gages was £19,000.000, and of this thq farmers had to pay not less than £lO,000,000 a year. What the farmers got was not the freehold but the mortgageTib'd. The so-called “freehold” led to a ruinous ramp of buying and selling land, of speculating and gambling.

Take note of the following statistics dealing with transfers of land between Tn. this period land transfers numbered 484,357 or three transfers for every landholder in New Zealand in town and country. The area transferred was 39,343,000 acres or three-fifths of the total land area of New Zealand. The consideration money passed in connection with these transfers totalled £512,760,000, or 83 per cent, of the capital value of the whole of the land in the Dominion, The cost ol transfers—legal expenses, stamp duties, and land agents’ commissions (these commissions cover nearly one-half of the tranfer costs) —is 5 per cent. Five per cent, on a consideration money sum of £512,760,000 is twenty six million pounds. Every penny of this twenty-six million pounds represents dead weight on land and industry. In the three-year period 1924-27 when the Man Who Gets Things Done was Prime Minister, the agricultural population declined by 12,359. Yet there were 104,443 transfers; 6.009,000 acres involved:

Consideration money £101,165,000; Cost of transfers over £5,000.000. It will be seen that sentimentality notwithstanding—the farmer with his freehold sitting in the evening under his own fig-tree, at the mercy of no man, and so on—the freehold in actual result gave “a virtual control ot the land to the mortgage financiers and empowered them to pocket practically the whole of the economic rent of land.”

Now, mark: these developments made New Zealand ripe for disaster the moment prices fell, as they did fall inevitably, living as we are in the capitalist system of private (enterprise and competition in finance and industry, of war and war debts, and ot the whole blind, haphazard, chaotic scramble that goes by the name of social order in the twentieth century. And when prices fell, insolvency descended on the mortgaged farmers, unemployment and wage reductions struck the workers, a miserable situation cursed the land.