COLONISING THE EAST COAST

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 225, 22 November 1888, Page 2

COLONISING THE EAST COAST

MR REES IN ENGLAND. AN INTERVIEW BY A LONDON JOURNAL. [From ” Capital and Colonization.”] Our readers are aware that Mr W. L. Rees has arrived in England from New Zealand, accompanied by Wi Pere, a Maori chief, for the purpose of setting ou foot a scheme of Co-operative Colonization on the grandest scale. His proposals have been favourably received in influential quarters and will shortly be laid before the Parliamentary Committee on Colonization. Meanwhile, steps are being taken to form an Association for the purpose of carrying them into effect, without delay. To meet the daily increasing demand for information as to this remarkable movement, we have pleasure in publishing the substance of a conversation between Mr Rees and a representative of Capital and Colonization. Reporter: This is a great scheme Mr Bees; far and away the greatest colonizing project that has ever been suggested. Mr Rees : Well I suppose it is. OUTLINE OF THE SCHEME.

Reporter: You propose to transplant our unemployed labour to the unoccupied lands of the Maories, and to form settlements there on a true co-operative basis, by which capitalist, producer, and consumer shall all share equitably in the wealth produced ? Mr Rees: That is so. Reporter: And you say that this process may be indefinitely extended—so long as there is waste land in the different colonies and unemployed labour at home. Have you any doubts as to the results ? Mr Hees: None. The only limit of the success of our operations is the productiveness of nature. When that fails, we shall fail, but not till then. Reporter : The results then are as certain as the primeval promise, that while the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest shall not oease. But whete will you find markets for your produce ? Mr Rees: We shall create our own markets by making the purchasers of our products sharers in the wealth produced. Remember that what we propose is not a limited and partial co-operation, but co operation all round. Reporter: The principles of the scheme then are capable of world-wide application, but you propose to begin operations in New Zealand ? THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS. Mr Rees: Yes. In the North Island of New Zealand 10,000,000 of acres are owned by the natives, who are anxious to enter into partnership with Europeans for the profitable working of their lands. Wi Pere and I control the deeds of 250,000 acres of this land, on the east coast, well situated, and including the harbor where Captain Cook careened and repaired his ships 120 years ago. The climate is one of the best in the world, and the land is well adapted for pastoral purposes, fruit growing, and to some ex ent for agriculture. Here we propose to place the first settlements.

JUSTICE TO THE NATIVES. Reporter: Will the natives be elbowed off their lands as your settlements extend ? Mr Rees : Not at all. They will continue to live where they do now. They will retain their agricultural reserves and cultivations of two or three acres per head—enough for their wants. We shall take the land for which they have no use, and pay them for it, but not in money. They will become shareholders in, the enterprise to the value of their land, and like other shareholders they will benefit by the profits realized and the increasing values. Thus they and their children will always have an interest in the land, in common with other shareholders. Reporter: Your scheme then will tend to eleva’e the Maories, and not to dispossess or extinguish them ? PROVISION FOR PUBLIC PURPOSES. Mr Rees : Yes. Provision will be made for the education of their children as well as of the white children. A sufficient proportion of all profits and increased values—say ten per cent.—will be set apart for religious, educational, and general social purposes, including recreation. VALUE OF THE LAND. Reporter: I see the price to be paid to the Maories for these 250,000 acres is £1 per acre. Does that sum represent the value of the land ? Mr Rees: No. The land is worth more than that. And yet the terms arranged are fair and just to the Maories. The land is heavily encumbered; the Maories are doing nothing with it, and the payment of interest on the mortgages, together with taxation, including local rates, is a heavy burden to them, and would ultimately entail the loss of their land. The price of £1 per acre will pay off all encumbrances and leave a large balance for the Maories. Reporter: What is your estimate of the actual value of the land ? Mr Rees : The moment we settle upon the land it will be worth at least £3 per acre, and will go on rising in value. Remember, however, that by the terms we give the Maories, they will be sharers in the increased values thus created, as well as in the other profits of our operations. TERMS OF FUTURE PURCHASES. Reporter: What price is proposed to be paid for the remainder of the 10,000,000 acres, or such portion of it as the Maories may cede? As the settlements extend the adjacent land will persumably rise in value. Mr Rees: The Maoris leave the matter in our hands. They say, “ You do what is fair.” We shall put a fair estimate on the remaining land when we want it, and pay them accordingly. The price of £1 per acre applies only to the 250,000 acres of which we have now the control, Reporter : How do you intend to raise the capital ? THE PROPOSED ASSOCIATION. Mr Rees: A Central Association will be formed with limited liability, and the capital will be obtained partly from the shareholders, and partly by loan guaranteed by the Imperial Government at 3 per cent.; or, failing this, by debentures secured upon the property of the Association.

Reporter: Your authorised capital must be very large; but ia it necessary that the whole of the 250,009 acres should ba taken up at once ? 5,000 FAMILIES TO BE SENT OUT.

Mr Rees : No. We can begin with £50,000 and the purchase of 20,000 acres, for which we should get a separate legal title clear ot all encumbrances. But what we propose is to send out, with aa little delay as possible, 5000 labouring families selected from the agricultural and dairy farming districts, and from among the crofters. As soon aa that numbar is completed the whole 250,000 acres would be occupied. PAYMENT OF EXPENSES. Reporter: Will the Association defray all the expenses of the transport and settlement of the selected families 1 Mr Rees: As a rule, yes. Families with means wishing to settle on the lands of the Association and work them independently, may be allowed to purchase land and would, of course, pay all their own expenses. NO CREATION OF LJ.UOZ ESTATES. Reporter: You do not mean that capitalists shall be allowed to acquire large tracts of land for their own benefit 1 Mr Rees: No. The land sold tor independent working will be strictly limited in quantity, and no one will be allowed to purchase who is not aotua'ly a settler, and a shareholder in the Association to the value of his land. Reporter: The arrangemmt as to absolute purchase is meant I to provide scope for individual energy among the settlers but not to afford facilities for the oreation of large estates ? Mr Rees: Precisely. No one will be allowed to make a fortune out of this enterprise, and no loophole will be left for jobbery. GUIDING PRINCIPLES. Reporter : You take high ground as to the principles and aims of the Association ? Mr Bees: the highest. We aim at doing the best we ean for evefy one connected with us. Our principle ie mutual hip regulated by law. We propose no soda ism and no communism, but the formation ot * corporate body to act trustee let *U>|

OASES OF MISCONDUCT. Reporter: What will you do with persons guilty of misconduct —the idle, the vicious . Mr Rees: Give them fair warning, and then, if necessary, dismiss them from the service of the Association. Reporter: Will that course ba within your legal right ? Mr Bees : Certainly it will. All the people sent out, except intending independent settlers, will be the servants of the Association, and liable to dismissal in case of miscon j dnet. Beporter: They are also shareholders in the concern ? Mr Bees: Yes, and as such they will hare votes in the appointment of the directors, but the directors, once appointed, will have full authority during their term of office. Beporter: In case of dismissal what becomes of the interest of the persons dismissed in the property of the Association ? Mr Bees: They will be entitled to wages, share of profits, and share ot increased values, up to the date of dismissal, and those they will receive. THE DRINK QUESTION. Beporter : I see the Association is to have control of the liquor traffic in the settlements. May I ask you—why not keep out the drink altogether, as is dona, with such good results, in the Canadian North West ? Mr Bees: The Association can do so if it pleases. It will have absolute power to restrict or prohibit the sale of liquor in any, or all, of its territories. What I propose is to confine the traffic within very narrow limits —that the Association shall have complete control of all refreshment houses in which drink is sold, that no drink shall be sold even, in those houses except to lodgers, and that there shall be no public bars for the sale of J intoxicants. It will be quite open to the Association, however, to form total abstinence settlements, within the limits ot which no liquor shall ba sold.

TERMS OFFERED TO SETTLERS. Reporter: What terms will be offered to suitable people ? Mr Rees: We shall pay the passage of each family, say on the average £4O, receive them on arrival, and provide them with a tarnished cottage of two roomi, and an allottmant of a few acres of land—say four to six acres, according to the number of children—to ba charged to them at the rate ot say £2 per acre. This land is intended as the family homestead, and will become their absolute property. The great bulk of the land of the settlement will ba farmed by the Association, by combined labour on a large scale, with all the appliances necessary to secure the beat results. Beporter: In what manner will the settlers ba employed? Mr Bess : The men and a certain number of unmarried women will be employed by the Association at weekly wages. The men will receive probably £1 per week, and the women 125., but their wages will be subject to deduc> tion for full rations, so that only a small proportion will be paid in cash.

REPAYMENT OF ADVANCES. Reporter :How will the advances for passages and homesteads be repaid—not oat of wages ? Mr Rees : Oh no. Out of the general profits and increased values in which all will share. The wages mentioned are lower than usual in New Zealand, but the difference will be more than made up by the participation in profits, RAPID INCREASE IN VALUES. Reporter: In one ot your pamphlets, Mr Bees, you publish a series of tables showing the profits and increased values expected fo accrue from the settlement ot 2,000 families upon 111,000 acres of land, from which it appears that tbe property of the Association would be nearly doubled at the end of the second year. Can you give me any figures to show briefly how such results as these are arrived at ? For instance, is not tha cost of clearing the land a heavy item ? Mr Rees : Not at all. We do not tell the big trees. We simply ring the bark and leave them to die. We fell the light timber and leave it on the ground till summer and then burn it. During the autumn we have heavy rains. Before the end of the autumn we send men to sow grass seed on the ashes, and at the end of tha six months we have excellent grass which never dies. The cost approximately per acre is

Felling and burning, £lss; Seed, 10s.; S owing, la. 61.—Total £1 16s. 6d. Say £2 per acre. Thia is quite an outside estimate, as you will see by the returns I now show you. Fencing will be but a small item, say ss. per acre, because the land will be farmed in large areas. Add £1 as the price of tha land and ss. for fencing, the total cost is £3 ss. per acre. The cost ot fern land is nearly as much, although you only burn fern and spend nothing for cutting, because you have to lose sheep and wool in keeping down the young fern during the first two years. These lands will carry an average of 2A sheep per acre all the year round—no shelter required. The produce may be reckoned thus: — Wool from 2} [sheep and 1 lamb, say 6s ; 1 fat sheep, say 6s.— Total 12s. But instead of selling our fat sheep on the spot we shall export them to England, where they will sell for 6d. per lb. all round, bringing us about £1 par head after paying expenses of transport. The land, therefore, which costs £3 ss. per acre may be expected to bring in £1 6s per acre annually. Such land in grass is worth to-day in New Zealand at least £5 per acre. I base my estimates on returns made for me by experienced men in the district—station holders and overseers of stations—and they can be verified by gentlemen from the East Coast now in London. Reporter: Do you base the whole of your estimates as to cost, carrying capabilities and values upon your own calculations, or upon the returns you refer to ? Mr Bees: Altogether upon those returns, with which my own knowledge, and the evidence given to me by other practical men in tbe district, entirely coincide. Reporter: How is it then that these practical men do not make rapid fortunes ? Mr Rees : When wool was dear they did. And now if they could obtain the cams markets for their produce I propose to obtain, they still do so. Bat as matters stand they would have to pay from eight to twelve par cent, for borrowed money, and they have to contend with various difficulties, such as highly-paid and often unsatisfactory service, as well as precarieua and unremunerative markets. Reporter: I see the estimates of increased values in other portions of the property are much higher. Mr Rees : The arable land which we should place under cultivation, would probably be worth £lO per acre at the end of two years, and the young orchard! to be planted might be reckoned at the same rate. Land in and around townships of course commands much higher prices. I put the average at £2O per acre.

Reporter : That seems a low estimate for town lots. VALUE OF LAND AT GISBORNE. Mr Rees ;It certainly is low. In oursmall town of Gisborne, the site of which was pur< chased from the natives twenty-three years ago for £2 per acre, choice allotments have been since sold at the rate of £B,OOO per acre. I will show you the exact spot on this photograph. FURTHER SOURCES OF PROFIT. Mr Rees : Beyond these increased values of the lands tbq increase of stock—cattle, sheep, and horses—would be a large item. In the official sheep return, which I hand . you, the numbers of sheep in the district are shown to have been doubled since 1879, although scores of thousands have been boiled down for their or sent away to market, Yqu see that the margin of profit forthomning from these and other sources ample to cover all contingencies that eaa reasonably be anticipated. DRAWBACKS TO BE LOOKED FOR. Reporter: You refer to such possible drawbacks as defective management, cattle disease, lack of remunerative markets, failure of crops, etc. ? Mr Rees: They are all taken account of. We are liable to accidents and failures in New Zealand as elsewhere, bu(i humanly speaking, I believe that nothing short of being swallowed up by an earthquake could permanently affect the prosperity of the settlements. Reporter: What you have been good enough to tell me, Mr Rees, conveys of course, only she barest outlines of a scheme of such magnitude as this. I may take It that in yoar view there is PRACTICALLY NO llglt to the possible range of your operations! Mr Rees I None whatever. The Association will take power to tarry on any kind of

holiness or manufacture, and in short to do anything and everything that may be lawfully done by any individual subject of the Crown. Reporter: You como among us at the right, moment, Mr Rees, for the time is ripe for inch an enterprise as you propose. In the midst of our industrial depression and social perplexities you bring us promise of an effectual remedy for tbe distress under which many of our people are suffering, and for the evils which follow in its train. Every one must feel that this great project presents the strongest possible claims upon public sym pathy and support, and that no expenditure of money or labor should be spared to cry at it to a successful issue.