The Oamaru Mail. TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1914.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12259, 9 June 1914, Page 4

The Oamaru Mail. TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1914.

The country of the north is once more showing signs of aggreAggregation. gration. Homesteads are said to be abandoned, creameries closed, and schools shorn of their attendance. Two years ago this, was the song of lamentation that arose around the township of Mangaweka.' There was a- parliamentary enquiry, which declared that the Government was not responsible, and the affair was buried. So was a good deal of the settlement of that very rising district. Since then the Government passed *ts famous Land Act of 1912. giving the freehold indiscriminately to .ihe_ I.i.p. settlers and the '-rest. It was objected that tliis would certainly increase the existing tendency to aggregation. Under the old system the tenant could •sell his interest', but he had to leave a man in his nlaee to take un the work and keen it going. All the tenant has to do under the new system is to ncouire the freehold. He can only ac.quire it subject to the iisualilimitation. condition; that is"He cannot buy if he holds land'to the 'statutory limit, but having acquired tlie freehold there is no limit to his power ._ The law does not prevent any one from buying as much land as he' can outside the Crown estate. It was predicted that much land would be bought up in. this way, but the prediction was laughed to scorn. In the Legislative Council much was made of the objection by those who insisted that there was danger in losing the residential condition. The Leader of the Council thereupon scoffed at the residential condition. He denounced it as slavery. He could not see how in a free country anv man should be compelled'to resitle anywhere but the place that suited him. He nrevailed in the Council as his leader [had "nrevailed in the Lower Hon.se, and '. Parliament rose with the consciousness that it was .committed to a somewhat dangerous experiment—the danger being of the aggregation of : farms. ' Liberals shuddered when they remembered the fight made by John M'Ken- • zie for the l.i.p. system for the prevention of this verv thing. The new. Act was left to work its way, and what that way has been,, there is some reason to susoect. A Mr- M'Kean. has written to the Evening Post describing how there has been a- great deal of aggregation "in the Kiwitea County, with which'he is intimately acquainted. He speaks of all the signs of abandonment, and this district is quite a' new district. In the infancy of settlement it is being ravaged by the worm of aggregation; If this is true, the disease is spreading fast over the most promis-" ing portions of the. country, just where the new settlers have" begun to hew their way out of independence. There, must be" an enquiry, but wo yrant no such enqnirv as the last.*- It is not a time for political tactics. It is a- time for finding 'a cure for a national .evil of the first magnitude. All possible witnesses must be called, not selected men to turn the enquiry into a- side track. There must be pictures of- the , devastated areas, and the investigators should visit the spot. Above- all things the enquiry should not be by parliamentary committee, for these committers are notoriously unreliable. • ..It should be by the best and most knpar--tial and best trained men that can be obtained. The State cannot buy lands at great cost to have then transferred to non-residents. We want settlers on the soil, scholars for the country schools, and for the land, pastoral industries that employ men; not dogs.