The Opunake Times. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1895. FAIR RENT.

Opunake Times, Volume III, Issue 134, 15 October 1895, Page 2

The Opunake Times. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1895. FAIR RENT.

Mb MoKenzie's Fair Rent Bill passed its second reading in the House, but on the understanding that the third reading would not be taken this session. We do not think there is very much probability of the third reading being taken next session either, if the Bill remains in its present form. The fact of it being read a second time we look upon as an expression of opinion that some means of meeting what are real hardships in some cases of the relations between landlords and tenants is desirable, and if a measure could be framed which would be just to both landlord and tenant, we daresay it would find a place on our Statute Book. Such a measure, however, will have to be the outcome of deep thought, and not merely an expression of meaningless verbiage, as we contend the present Bill is. Had the present Bill passed, the majority of the lessees under the West Coast Settlements Reserves Act would, at the expiration of a couple of years from entering on leases, be exempt from payment of rent altogether. Should a selector take up 200 acres of land under that Act, at the expiration of two years, to comply with the conditions imposed, he would require to have 20 acres in cultivation. Having this area cultivated it would be clear that on application to the Fair Rent Board he would be able to show that it would not be capable of returning him a living, therefore there would be no surplus left, and consequently no rent for the landlord. At the end of four years he is only bound to have one-fifth or forty acres cultivated, arid this as agricultural or grazing land would not leave any surplus, so that he would still be sitting rent free, and as he is not bound to improve any greater area if he likes to make the balance of his value of improvements in buildings, we do not quite see when he would be called "on to pay rent, if at all. We think this would rather upset the Public Trustee in his fatherly care of his beneficiaries. Of course the same rulefwould apply to the Crown tenants, and "also the tenants of private owners who held bush lands. Another knotty question would be the cost of production in fully improved farms. By means of dairying, more per acre, we believe, can be taken out of the land than by any other method, but in this line it has been clearly demonstrated that if labor has to be paid there is nothing in it, whilst if a man has a family able to do the work he can make money out of it. If, then, one tenant has to employ labor, this would count as part of the cost of production, and would correspondingly decrease the landlord's perquisites ; but if the man who gets his own family to do the work is not allowed for it on a labor scale, it would mean that his children were giving their labor for the benefit of the landlord instead of, as is natural, for the benefit of their parents. This proposed method of arriving at what is the bona fide surplus, to be called rent, is totally impracticable. The landlord's interest, whether that landlord be the Crown, the Public Trustee or a private owner, must bo protected to the extent of the capital invested, just as much as the tenant's interest. There is "no justice in fixing that the tenant has the right to occupy, pay himself interest of the produce of the land on his capital, and then, unless there is a surplus over and above this, that the landlord should starve. Try again, Mr McKenzie.