The Wendonside Settlers.

Otago Witness, Issue 1832, 31 December 1886, Page 31

The Wendonside Settlers.

I Editor Witness,— Several letters having appeared in the columns of your paper, as well as in those of some of your contemporaries, respecting the defaulting leaseholders in the Wendon i and Wendonside districts — from which one would be led to believe that those poor men were verily a set of martyrs — perhaps you will have no objection to inserting a few words on the other side of the question, comparing the lpt of those people with that of their more fortunate (?) neighbours, the cash purchasers. In the first place it must be remembered that those people did not obtain their sections in the auction room but by tender, so that they have not the excuse of momentary excitementfor givingsuch high prices for -their holdings. On the contrary, they quietly sat down and after calculating wljat they could afford for the land made out their tenders. Since then the price of agricultural produce has fallen but very little, if anything — oats, the chief produce of the district, having averaged more during the last two years than the two preceding ones. Horseß certainly have fallen in value ; but as horse breeding has not been gone in for to any extent this decline has not been felt. As regards the quality of the land, no one of them could, I think, have calculated on growing heavier crops than those they have grown. Now, what seems very strange in the matter is this: Howisitthat these men, the majority of whom are farmers with colonial experience, find themselves not only unable to pay any rent at all; but according to some of the letters written to the papers, have sunk during the three years they have been on the land some £700 to £800' on .their sections, when, according to their calculations, they could afford to pay from' ss to jfs per acre rent for it. ' Another thing that seems to me very queer is, how is it that these men, with virgin .soil of fir«t-clasß quality and paying no rent, have been losing money by cropping when some of their neighbours on inferior land that have been cropping for years have been able to hold their own even when paying heavy interest on their holdings? If the Land Board and 1 the > School Commissioners allow these men to slip'put of their bargains, after taking the cream off the land Vlwntf ytytajp far wtfethey^re^awd/tyw-

turn a portion of the money paid by the cash purchaser and the capitalised deferred-payment Bettler, who has paid his rents as they became due, and who in many cases was run up at auction to a big price for his land. Ido not see how they can refuse to do so, as the land is not like private property, where, of course, the owner can do as he likes with his own ; but it belongs to the public, and the commissioners and the members of the Land Board are only the public's trustees. Or'do they intend putting a premium on dodging, by allowing the defaulters to got their sections back at a greatly reduced price, and thus virtually tell the public that for the future the man who makes the biggest promises will get his land the cheapest, on condition he does his best to break his promises ? — I am, &c , Onh Whose Thndeb was not Accepted.