MR. KIRKBRIDE AND THE SINGLE TAX.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9491, 21 April 1894, Page 6

MR. KIRKBRIDE AND THE SINGLE TAX.

0 vr TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Mr. Kirkbride does not for a m/-, admit, as Messrs. Kelly and Bant ment .will,' that "They gave the risk „ f y l ay h « uaid, accurately and mildly. P[l p «? at he sentences side by side" too 1 said, " Farmers came Messrs v-n to the conclusion lone; Batty stal* H; ? "■"'i ago that this outcry about Kirkbride saidh, " Mr dear land, and macces- his letters that . one of sible land, does net gene- only town', , lt rally emanate from those said land wL , p L e *ho who really want land, 400 dear." but from men who rather love to walk ou the pavement in Queen-street, »nrt advocate a good swingeing land tax, that would make- So-and-So in Kpsoin drop his land like a hot spna." My meaning is plain— about inaccessible land is raised by men**? walk, etc., and advocate "a good surin 0 land tax that would make so-and-so d« L" 8 land like a hot spud." It is mow?h.„ P hls able that I had some of my old Anti Pnv™ 13 ' friends in my mind when I wrotf' Pove p rt » haps, like the three tailors of TooW ■«- r ' ! they fancy they are the townspeople u ' Kelly and Batty's : letter SS'ji.h ® longes, and asks me to explain pronosiH™ that I never set up. ■ I never argued thlS® landowner m Queen-street woufd exueri,n aily better treatment under the B ffi" than the Epsom or Mangere landowners No doubt a good swingeing land ! would make them all 3rop° it lL* ta * hot spud I did not coin the " hot sr)ad phrase, and in my letter of September 20fh 1892, it was placed m inverted commas. / had it from the Up. of a prominent t&xer two or three years ago " . Messrs. Kelly and Batty tell us " that the bingle tax would immensely benefit lai d users by making it impossible for mere landownership, either in town or country £ limit industry, or to take toll of its produce " Certainly mere land-ownership would be, farce under even such a single tax or land tar, as that proposed by the presided of the Ground Rent Revenue League. Mr With., namely, that th« present land tax be in creased id in the £1 year by year or 1* years, when land-owners would be Davit * a, £4 percent, rental to the Government Th. Georgian era would have begun' th! State would have the kernel, and the detrauded landowner would have the shell a. eat proportion of the land . mri are landowners in this province. You cannot disassociate them here. In the country districts, five-sixths of the land users are land-owmers like myself makim? their living by farming their own land. Can any one be found simple enough to think fur a moment that the heavy toll which the Government would take out of our produce in the form of a single tax, would immensely benefit us? The few misguided enthusiasts who have called themselves successively the Anti-Poverty Society, the Jubilee Laud Reform Association, and now the Ground Rent Revenue League, make little headway with their Georgian theory, in a community largely consisting of small landowners who are land-waera, and where these laud-wen are amongst the worst paid workers in the community. When these men tell us that this laud value tax will not take from the worker the wealth that he produces, I have hardly patience to go on. Land-users who owe their own farms, and who make their living by working harder and working longer hours than most workers in the community would have to pay this single tax out of the produce they had wrung from, the soil by their labour —I am, etc., Matthew M. Kirkbridk. Mangere, April 19, 1894. P. Agricultural statistics published in the Herald a few days back showed that the holdings in the County of Manukau consisted of 1794 freehold and 250 rented' County of Rodney, 639 freehold. 39 rented; Waitemata, 798 freehold, 159 rented— so on.