THE RURAL EXODUS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6219, 27 May 1907, Page 5

THE RURAL EXODUS.

(To'the Editor "N.Z, Times.”) Sir,—ln your issue of yesterday you pubjieli an interview with. Mr Hogg, vI.H.R., in which he declares, and no doubt correctly, that the aggregation of large holdings is proceeding apace in this district, despite the Land Settlement Act and the large sums that are spent annually on public improvements in this district. Mr Laurenson, in his Mosgiel nldress, also showed by statistics that there had been an actual increase of the town population at the expense of the country districts. It is an error to suppose that this condition is peculiar to this colony. The same phenomena is observable in the British Islands, France, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland, and even from the spacious frontiers of the United States the drift of population is steadily from the country to the town. The result is the inevitable aggregation of large estates in fewer hands, the disturbance, of the economic harmony of production, and the sacrifice of agriculture to manufactures, with the substitution of an extensive culture of large sheep runs for the intense culture of the small settler, which is not so profitable to the State. A variety of causes are assigned for this condition, viz., the larger wages and the greater gaiety of town life, and the introduction of steam and ‘electricity. But these are only minor causes, since it cannot be maintained that a normal man would prefer the unnatural life of an unhealthy town with its dangerous occupations to the free, healthful life of nature. The actual cause is the high land values, and the difficulty of obtaining easy access to land. What the remedy is for this state of affairs I will, if you permit, indicate in another letter, but it is certain that the clamour of Mr Massey and his stonewall contingent for the enactment of a Homestead Act will afford no relief. The United States Government has already tried this experiment, giving the settler one hundred and sixty acres as a free gift, with the result that all these holdings at the present day have been absorbed in the bonanza farms of the West. —I am, etc., F. W. BURKE. Masterton, M>.y 25th.