LAND AND WAGES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21579, 25 August 1933, Page 15

LAND AND WAGES

Sir, —When speaking before the Australian Labour League at Sydney, in 1906, shortly before the fateful voyage homewards, the Rt. Hon. R. J. Soddon said that, "up to the -present the Labour laws of New Zealand have benofited one class only, and that, tho landlord class." That sentence expresses a central and fundamental truth, for neither free trade, currency and credit reform, derating, or any other reform whatever will give us a proper measure of economic justice while it is possible for every benefit to be ultimately absorbed into increased land values and speculative sales. Land rentals (euphemistically called interest and principal on mortgage'! mop up every gain until the genuine farmer is down on tbe bare subsistence line, and then his reduced purchasing power slows down the demand for manufactured goods, and the cumulative effects follow rapidly. There is a general deflation, and then tho whole process goes on afresh. We may reduce wages to the uttermost, giving the barest of a bare subsistence, for workers are not like so many pneumatic tyres: they cannot live oil air. Wbon we have done that we will find that all tho concomitant distress has been in vain, for tbe land rentals will absorb the difference once more, and not until wo have adopted measures to <jive the economic rentals of land to the community will we be able to abolish tariffs on necessities, derate farm lands, raise effective wages, and cease from denuding the wage worker, tho salaried man, the industrialist, the merchant, and the capitalist of their just earnings. Interest paid on .borrowed money is v.»igeg, tho wages of capital, and as such is as legitimate and fully entitled to protection as any other form of wages. The foregoing does not mean that other reforms are unnecessary. For example, we cannot become wealthy apart from removal of restrictions which prevent the exchange of wealth, and without that exchange money has no meaning, but the land question underlies all theso others. Matamata. T. E. McMillan.