LAND BOOMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14492, 5 October 1910, Page 7

LAND BOOMS.

PRIME MINISTER'S VIEWS. [BY TIXEGBAPH.—SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] Wellington*, Tuesday. Land values and suburban homes were the subject of some interesting remarks by the Prime Minister (Sir Joseph Ward) in the speech which he delivered at the Liberal and Labour Federation social last night. Referring to the tightness of money, Sir Joseph Ward said that the people who were troubled most were those who had been drawn into the land boom in some towns' and suburbs, and especially in one or two northern places. His own opinion was that the craze led many people to invest their earnings, and they were not now able to get relief. It was important to avoid a repetition of such a state of affairs, and he thought that people in public positions and others should do all in their power, in the better times that were imminent, to exert a ■steadying influence. It was of no use trying to draw the vitals out of the people who were going on those lands. There had been a great evolution going on that was going to make it difficult to extract the high prices that were paid a few years ago. He referred to the' Government advances to workers and cheap fares on the railways. When the working classes realised what an advantage it would be to them to go a few miles out of town to live, it would . change the whole system in regard to excessive values and rentals that were too high for a man of moderate means to pay.