WAKEFIELD'S POLICY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22833, 14 September 1937, Page 13

WAKEFIELD'S POLICY

Sir.—Duo to the jaundiced view taken by Karl Marx in his "Capital," most people, especially Labour men, have quite an erroneous idea of the policy in the mind of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, undoubtedly the greatest figure ill all the history of British colonisation. His "sufficient price" for land was intended to benefit both employers and employees, for be bad seen, notably in the case of the Swan River settlement in Western Australia, the disasters which followed wide dispersion of land and labour and capital. John Peel, in this case, took up 500,000 acres of land. His employees left him to take up land themselves. The result was that Peel lost all his capital (real capital, such as seeds, tools, etc.), and some of his former employees later actually starved to death I The flaw in the scheme was that Wakefield did not know how to fix the "sufficient price," for ho said, " I frankly confess that I do not know.".lncidentally, his famous "Lcttor from Sydney," in which the price factor was first published, was written in 1829, 50 years before. Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" was written, in 1879. Wakefield expressed the view that what he called a "rent tax" (not' the stupid "land tax" terminology) would provide the whole of the revenue required by the colony if the full rent were publicly collected. Anyone familiar with the iand values gamblings that havo followed every use--1 ful public work, such as roads and railways, and every improvement in the technique of production, must admit that Wakefield was right, and this view he held at least ten years before Henry George was born! When this Dominion' adopts the policy Wakefield had in mind, there will be no arbitrary fixing of either wages or pj-ices; there will be complete frco trade with the Mother Country; the public debt, both local and national, internal and external, will gradually be paid off, and as soon as the policy is put into operation, New Zealand will be well on the way to becoming the economic paradise of the Pacific, and really will "lead the world again." T. E. McMillan. Matamata. > % '. .'I ' j •