NATIVES AND THE LAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22032, 12 February 1935, Page 13

NATIVES AND THE LAND

Sir, —All who are interested in what is called "the land question"—an evergrowing body —will have read withunderstanding appreciation the comment from the Manchester Guardian which appeared in last Friday's Hkrai.ii. The position as there set out is perfectly correct, and it applies to all other native constituencies, such as our mandated territory of Samoa, and to Fiji and other areas. When I have previously pointed this out, it has sometimes been replied that a difference in monetary system is responsible for the fact that these natives know no povertv. This, however, is wide of the mark, for the gold standard, typical of orthodox finance if anything is, was still in full bloom in Africa, and yet, in 1913, several white settlors petitioned the Kenya Colony Commission to reduce the area of land which each native should he allowed to hold, and on which to get his living, for in no other way would it be possible to force the natives to work at the white man's industries for him. So long as the native is left secure in his communal land system he may not know progress as we understand 'it, because the native, wrongly, communisms labour products, or goods, as well but he knows no poverty amidst plenty,' either, the trouble comes when men are forced off the land, or leaxe it to follow industrial work, and thus lose communal value in the land if the rentals of the land are not taken for public purposes, instead of levying taxation. Here starts the process of the private appropriation of communal values, and the concomitant communal appropriation of private values, involving the diversion of earnings from producers to non-producors, this being the foundation of all our economic ills. There is 110 more fundamental or vitally important question to be solved to-day than that of deciding what is communal, and leaving it sacredly so; and what is individual, and leaving that completely free from confiscation by taxation. T. E. McMillan. Matamata.