STATE CO-OPERATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10127, 9 May 1896, Page 1 (Supplement)

STATE CO-OPERATION.

[Br COLO.VDS.] We peruse the reports of the Fruitgrowers' Conference with feelings of gratification, aud of pain. Gratification there is in thinking of the mine of wealth that Now Zealand has in her soil and climate for producing the finest fruits in the world, and at seoing the plucky determination with which the fruitgrowers have been battling individually with the difficulties of a new industry, establishing at their own costs and anxioty the fact that fruit growing can be made a success. But if one can only free his mind from the paralysing -gf asp of the dismal science," with its accursed limitations, one cannot but experience a sense of pain that the inconceivable potentialities of the State's wealth and credit are not directed to overcome these difficulties for the general good, instead of leaving individuals to wear out their hearts in the work.

Can anyone give a rational explanation why the State in its corporate capacity should not undertake the work of exploiting such industries as require long years to pass before there is any return from them, overcoming the initial obstacles as no private parties could do, and then recoup itself for the cost from those who would be prepared to take over such an industry as a going concern, when the troubles have been conquered? We have inherited from our grandmothers God rest their souls—certain sets of ideas from which we have difficulty in emanci pating our minds, and among them is the idea that the State is an entity so apart from the people who composo it, that it cannot concern itself with their special troubles without impairing its dignity and making an inextricable mess of things. It does not matter that we see disproof of this every day in a dozen things in which before our eyes the State conducts operations for us that in other days were considered irrevocably within the province of private enterprise. In the progress of society we are just like a marching array of pilgrims, whose advance must be measured by tho pace a which its halt and its blind and its cripples can travel.

Everybody that thinks for himself with unmuddled brains must see that the prin* ciple of the coming time will be that the representative rulers of tho State, that is the Legislature and the Government, are nothing more nor less than the directors of a great industrial joint stock company, whose duty it is to do everything they think the best for the benefit of the shareholders.

But in our advance towards the realization of this idea we have to wait on the thick-headed people till they have got illumination enough through tho density of their skulls to feel it safe to put down their feet; and so the world's advance is just kept at the pace/ at which its feeblest and stupidest can go. It in lamentable, but ib can't be helped; but there is nothing to 'prevent us from casting our thoughts a little ahead, and conceiving a state of things in which reason reigns in defiance of the grumblings and grunfings of the Mrs, Grundy of political economy, and the hootings of the belated, as of owls at midday. And what is there in reason to .prevent the State from taking up tho preliminary work of fruitgrowing in the interests of the people This is no menace to private enterprise nor interference with individual interests; quite to the contrary, it may be done in such a way as would facilitate private enterprise and give to tho stumbling struggling individual a helping hand to lead him over the sloughs. Suppose that for a start the State, that is to say its Commissioners, tho Government, planted a thousand acres of fruit trees. To' be simple we shall be specific and say *pple trees. Other fruit trees, combined or separate, would servo the purpose a« well, vines, olives, peaches, pears, plums, oranges, gooseberries, or anything else, whose produce, fresh, or pulped, or canned, or dried would have a market awaiting ib twelve thousand miles away. We shall say apples for simplicity. Suppose a site is chosen for a block of four thousand acres. Bo it among the cold clay lands extending away from the northern side of tho Waitemata, unfit for everything else, bub admirably fitted for the growth of fruit trees; or among the hundreds of thousands of acres in the North consigned to barrenness—or fruitgrowing. Or for preference be it en Matamaba, among the fifty-seven thousand acres held by the Estates Company, and offered to the Government ab £210s per acre. Already proved to be fitted for the growth of the finest fruit trees, with capacity for ordinary cultivation as an adjunct, and with facilities for rail and water carriage the situation presents all the conditions that are requisite.. Let it be divided into 200 sectiqns of twenty acres-each, fire acres. of each section being d.eYQbBcM/Q the growth of applet

It would give a congeries of orchards to the total extent of a thousand acres, a suitable area for the first doparturo in State collectivism as applied to fruitgrowing. Let the Government, obtaining expert management, lay down theso ono thousand acres in apple trees. Purchasing, fencing, draining, clearing, burning, ploughing thrice, harrowing as often, purchasing young trees and planting them, would, roughly estimated, cost £30 an acre; probably with the appliances of N steamploughs and other machinery—such as the State would naturally secure—and tho growth of nurseries, the amount would be considerably loss. Tho cost, however, may be estimatod as at this amount, or £150 for laying down each orchard of five acres.

During five years no returns would be derived from the orchards, but from that date onward tho returns, small at first, would at least pay tho expenses of tending, increasing from "year-to-year till in full bearing tlireo or four years after, Let tho cost of tending during the first five years and interest on capital bo stated as £10 per acre or £50 per lot per annum, or £250 in all, making tho cost of each five-acre orchard £400 when beginning to boar.

That sum at £6 per cent, por annum— which, under tho schome of the Advances to Settlors Act, would pay baok the capital in a terra of 36$ years—would represent £24 per yoar, as required to be yielded to recoup the expenditure. What tho orchard would really yield would dopend on what was subsequently done with the fruit.

The same principle that would warrant tho State in going so far would necessitate its overcoming the groatesb obstacle of all, and that which is at tho present mainly deterring from fruit-growing, namely, the transport to market in Europe. Not one solitary apple should be sold in New Zealand, even to the swarming thousands on tho neighbouring Hauraki Peninsula, then booming with gold. Such sale would bo interference with the rights of private and individual enterprise, from which this Bcheme may be kept utterly free.

But as the goasons come tho Stato should provide tho means of transport in a chartered steamer or steamers fitted with chilled chambers, and complete tho work by landing the fruit in chilled chambers in Manchester or London, or wherever a foreign market could bo found. Now for the profits on these five-acre orchards. We shall not take tho standard from tho illustration given tho other day at tho Fruitgrowers' Conference, at which a gentleman told of a three-acre apple farm tint produced in one year fruit valued at £800, or say £270 an acre. It is not too much to say, however, that an applo farm with secured access to tho English market would in full bearing produce fruit to tho not value of £100 an acre, or £500 a year for oach five-acre farm in full bearing. If it produced half the amount not, or £250 a year, it would bo a pretty fair return on something better than the State's investments in railways. Well, there would be hero 200 such farms of five acres—exclusive of oach 15 acres yet unimproved but available for other purpos'.■<* —each yielding from £250 to £500 a year, and which it would pay the State to lot at £24 a year. As we have said, for apples read at option grapes, olives, oranges, and all kinds of fruit growth, and wo have tho way in which the question of fruitgrowing could bo solved satisfactorily by the only party that represents the interests of tho community to be benefited, and the only party therefore that should incur the risk of tho expenditure; and we have tho linos on which, by extending from year to year and from district to district, Mew Zealand could be mado ono of the richest fruit-producing countries in the world.

And it would be done withoub tho expenditure of one red cent of tho taxpayers' money, and only by the simple and perfectly legitimate uso of the collective credit of the State.

What should bo dono with these fruit farms subsequently is a matter of separate consideration. Palpably they could be made of immense profit to tlio Stato if retained. But there is no intention of advocating Stato Socialism in all this, and there would be no difficulty in passing them into individual proprietorship. They could be passed over to Co-opera-tive Associations on such terms rb above, which, while recouping the State, would give competence and independence on tho easiest terms to a largo number of families of humble means but industrious habits.

Or they could be passed into tho hands of poor but industrious families, who, while repaying to the State by instalments, tho costs incurred, could have assured to them a comfortable competence without any expense to the State. For ib is literally true that withoub calling on the taxpayer for one farthing of incroased taxation, the State could thus placo an industrious family on an improved fruit farm, bringing in from £250 to £500 a year with prospective increase, for an annual sum—covering repayment of tho principal in a terra of years—of £24 por annum.

And more than this, the principle is capable of indefinite extension, and could be applied to family after family on perfectly safe linos, giving homos to hundreds and thousands of families without imposing burthens on anyone, and solely by the judicious and beneficent use of the onormous potentialities contained in tho collective credit of the State.