OF NEW ZEALAND INTEREST.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20833, 27 September 1929, Page 18

OF NEW ZEALAND INTEREST.

. SMALL HOLDINGS.' ( PURE CRYSTAL. (Froji Odb Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 23. Mr Walter Coath, of Auckland, in an interview with a representative of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, expressed his appreciation of the .Wellington Memorial Carillon, “It is the finest music I have ever heard,” he said. “The tone of that; half-hundred bells is so extraordinarily sweet and mellow that it reminds me of pure crystal. I cannot find- words sufficient tp express my keen delight in ing, this wonderful music. It has been a particular pleasure to me to have met and heard Mr Clifford Ball.”. EMPIRE MARKETING. Miss Ythil M. Herbert-Smith is supplying an interesting series of articles on Empire Marketing to the Eastern Daily Press. Her second article is. devoted entirely to. New Zealand produce. After describing the fruit industry, she says:— “ Another reason why I’m keen to let you know about this new industry is because it is mostly run by ex-service men —that should speak to you for itself. We take most of the Dominion’s exports, but I can’t help feeling certain that if we took a little more we should help New Zealand to clear up her own unemployment question which is troubling her, and so preventing family emigration from here; and if wo only took a lot more—that is, each of us taking a little more regularly—then, she would open her immigration doors again, and some of our people would get a chance, because 1 New Zealand will only have British (Scottish included) migrants.” UNIMPROVED VALUE. Mr G. C. Neville, who Las had experience of land tenure and development in New Zealand, writes to the Spectator on the question- of small holdings. “ English people,” he points out, “ think of taxation on the unimproved value as just another impost. The .whole point is that improvements and profits accruing owing to those improvements go free of all taxation. Under this system obviously every owner of land docs his utmost to make his area as economically efficient as possible, and takes every opportunity offered by slack times and available labour to add further improvements, , “In England it is precisely the reverse. If you take a derelict area and put money and labour and brain into it you have one tax after another heaped on you, and if a run of bad years intervenes you may be pushed off your holding because you can’t meet the taxation; while similarly if you take a highly developed farm and let it go to rack and ruin you are rewarded by a grateful nation and have your taxation reduced. ' “ Once you ruhstitute small ownership with taxation on the unimproved value only, the country people ./ill all hav» their bread buttered on the same side, and every crow tenting boy will be a potential landowner, even the countrybred kitchenm aid will guard the land for the sake of her father’s small estate. The countryside would immediately be gal vauised into movement and > progress to the great advantage of the industrialists and the relief of unemployment,” , .