SOUTH ISLAND IDLENESS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7225, 26 April 1884, Page 6

SOUTH ISLAND IDLENESS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —The head of our economical Government, which, by dint of borrowing a million a year, manages to meet Parliament with a deficit of only £IBO,OOO, has just favoured this part of the Colony with a severe lecture. Major Atkinson, that " hero of a hundred fights," has for the hundred-and-first time run away from his own recorded words, and had to set to work to explain away his publi i declarations. Long practice has enabled him to do this pretty well—not quite well enough, however. Forced to recant his recent airy assurance that " there is no real depression," he has addressed himself to explain the cause of the most real depression ever experienced in this island. He tells Canterbury and Otago that it is all due to their own peculiar idlenes > and extravagance. It is quite true that he did not say that these vices are confined to this part of the Colony, but he did say that our especial depression proceeded from them, and from them alone. Now, Sir, since in Auckland there is no depression at all: since in Napier people are doing comfortably, while in Taranaki there is quite a little "ooom" of prosperity ; since, even in Wellington, there is nothing like the ruinous stagnation existing here in the South; it follows, according to the Premier, that the South, and the South alone, is idle and extravagant. This is the idle, the North, the industrious, apprentice. Here, wo do nothing but ejaculate in mining shares, and import goods for which wo cannot pay. Major Atkinson advises us (see his Dunedin speech), " to economise," to " set to work," to " turn from mining speculations to the development of the country." The Premier, speaking, of course, as an agricultural and pastoral expert, is quite sure that if our farmers will only farm properly, wo could grow twice »3 much grain and wool as we do now. That this comes with especial grace from the lips of a North Islander, I shall propose to show. But, it is a peculiarity which I have noted before, that Northerners, e.g., Mr Firth, always know much better than we do how to farm, and are always ready to lecture ub upon our shortcomings. Yet, Sir, in the North Island itself they do not grow any agricultural produce worth speaking of. By idleness and extravagance the South Island grows twice as much wool as the

industrious and economical norm, uy long years of idleness Canterbury and Otago Wo been onabled bo to develop their country that they produce olovon times an much wheat as the rout of Now Zealand. In oats the disproportion is oven more extraordinary, for t hoß ° tw > Provinces grow sixteen times as much as the remainder of the Colony. Idle Canterbury alone grows eight times as much barley as the North Island; oxtravagant Otago much more also. Coming to root crops, I find that the same two reprehensible districts are responsible for six-sevenths of the turnips and two-thirds of the potatoes yielded by New Zealand soil. With an acreage of about a third of the Colony's surface, they account for nearly two-thirds of the sland ploughed and laid down in English grasses. Under the heading, too, of " Land broken up but not under crop," I find throe-fourths belongs to Canterbury and Otago. In 1883 this Colony exported 120,893 carcases of frozen mutton. Of tliis one cargo—a failure —came from Auckland, two (I think) from Wellington, the rest from these two idle Provinces. Now' for tho charges of mining speculativeness and over-importation. Of course, Sir, they don't speculato in mines in the North Island. There are no such places a 3 the Thames, Coromandel, Te Aroha, and Terawhiti. On the question of imports, lot your readers examine the Customs returns of the last three years. They will see there that Lyttelton has been a long way ahead of any other port in reducing its imports,- it began soonest to do it, and has reduced more in quantity. It is our exports which we have Bteadily increased. They have not been reducing in the North on the same scale. Why? Because our taxes sent to Wellington are paying for their imports. But they do not export very largely. To what does the Colony owe the establishment of direct steam communication with England ? Is it not to the enterprise of a Shipping Company established in Christchurch ? The head-quar-ters, too, of the Union Steamship Company, whose fine fleet is the admiration of visitors to the Colony, is in Dunedin. The Premier lectured us on the need for local industries. Is it in the North that one finds woollen factories, and boot factories, potteries, iron foundries, cheese factories, establishments for curing and freezing meat, huge brick kilns, and many other local industries ? Or is it we Southern idlers who have shown the North the way in these things ? Look, Sir, at our Agricultural College, and the noble public educational establishments to be seen here and in Dunedin. When we founded these, did we go to Wellington for the money ? Did we not pay every farthing out of our own pockets, out of the self-imposed land tax of £2 per acre, put upon our settlers ? Our provincial legislators anticipated Mr Henry George and other reformers in thus making land pay for the benefits Government conferred on its owners. Major Atkinson told his Dunedin audience that their producing population was overburdened with their non-pro-ducers. He spoke less than the truth. On the backs of Canterbury and Otago, the producers of the Colony, is laid the weight of the non-producing North Island. As a remedy, he pleasantly advises us to •' Learn to labour and to wait." I think I have shown that the people of this island know how to labour quite as well as gentlemen from Taranaki. As for waiting—are we to wait until the orange is sucked and the milch cow drained dry ? I see by this morning's paper that forty-two bankrupts are waiting the convenience of his Honor Mr Justice Johnston to deal with them. Here is another of our products ; the only oae the North Island has helped us to grow. —I am, &c, j W. P. KEB.YES.