THE LEGION’S POLICY.

Matamata Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1445, 27 July 1933, Page 4

THE LEGION’S POLICY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —A while back I had occasion to criticise the New Zealand Legion in your columns, but in the interim the Legion’s economic committee has been hammering out a policy.. If the reforms now published as the findings of the committee receive the support of the Legion as a whole, I shall have no hesitation in reversing my former attitude. The committee’s view of the currency problem constitutes a wise and moderate declaration, which may readily be endorsed by anyone who has been delving into “ this currency and credit business.” . 1 To my mind, however, the finding regarding the land question is the one of most profound importance, the really fundamental question. All wealth, in whatsoever forms, is the product of labour applied to land and the products of the land. There can be no wealth, or even token of wealth such as money and credit implements, until and unless wealth is first provided. in the manner above stated.. The reception by the commuity, or State, of the com-munity-created values of land would at once put an end to the pernicious speculation in land, and obviate the need for most other forms of taxation that are now weighing the people down with their crushing total. If the policy as stated is carried out it will undoubtedly lift New Zealand out of the depression and set it well on the road to progress and prosperity. There will then be no unemployment and no poverty. We will be able to have all the economic freedoms—freedom of trade, of finance, and of the use of land, unburdened by the handicap of purchase price. None need be dispossessed of the land they now occupy, but all will pay to the community, in the form of an annual rental, the community-created values. At last we have a policy that really will get us “ round the corner ” if we can only give it enough backing to have it implemented.—l am, etc., t. e. McMillan.