THE LAND QUESTION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8647, 4 February 1914, Page 9

THE LAND QUESTION

To the Editor "N.Z. Times." Sir, —A reference was lately made iu your columns to the evil effects of land monopoly as shown by the huge areas of vacant land in liaivke's Bay owned by a handful of people, and the locking up of largo areas elsewhere by 'Tings and private speculators lor future "unearned" proiu. 1 do not think, however,' the average man has any idea of the baneful effect of this artificial scarcity of land in forcing up land values for the small struggling settler. I have been afforded lately an opportunity of visiting some of the homes -on theso high-priced dairy farms, principally on the West Coast, and I can only say the system under which men and women are forced to. neglect their children and to toil from morning till night under such awful conditions, is one that cries aloud for universal reprobation. .I. visited one farm where there wore five 6mall children, the youngest a baby in arms, the eldest barely seven. The father ana mother were literally toiling from dawn to dark, milking 45 cows, feeding pigs. taking milk to the factory, etc. Ihe land was so loaded with mortgages, represeating, not money employed 7 in increasing the productivity of the soil, or in improvements, but merely what each successive owner had in the course of the last few years loaded it with as his share of the "'unearned," without effecting any improvements worthy of the name, that the last ''owners" were bowed to> the earth with the effort to sustain the burden of the interest. What chance have people living under such conditions of living a human existence? What chance have the children of being decent citizens? A 3 I passed one farm where a woman, dehumanised, worn with toil, haggard, and with torn and soiled garments, was, up to her ankles in mud, trying to drive some cows into a dirty shied, while her husband, equally dis reputable-looking, with that hungry look about the ©yea that eeeins to cling to these poor folk, was harnessing a horse to a tumbledown cart, I heard the wail of a baby from 'the adjoiniim cottage. "Yes," said the man I was riding with, "you can Shear that baby wailing every time you pass; it's shut up by itself for hours' at a time while milking is on. Whit time haVe poor folks to .attend-to their babies?" ••- . Tot the soil was good, the eun shone brightly, the air was eweet and balmyGod had done his share and more to supply all needful things. It may be said why do people consent to take up land under euch conditions? The answer is because people must live, and the present day conditions are such that you can get land on no other terms, unless you have much more capital than these people possess. Quite eo. Butare we therefore to sit still without an effort to alter such conditions? Is* it not a fact' that if the author of evil had devised a plan by which God's good gifts of land and stream, of air and sunshine, should be nullified and rendered a curse instead of a blessing, he could not have hit upon a better than our present system of land holding? Under which in "God's own country," at the present moment, you may hear the wail of neglected babies and children, sacrificed at the call of greed; under which the mother, hood and manhood of our people is being stifled and brutalised. Under Which, while we are creating an aristocracy of money, without even the eaving merit of quality, and piling up the profits of Shylock, the very soul ia being crushed out of the toilers on the land! —I am, etc., ' .