OUR RESOURCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1844, 25 March 1887, Page 11

OUR RESOURCES.

SUB-TROPICAL NEW ZEALAND. Weittbx *or thb Witxb«3 i?r Q. B. Aldebtos (L,atß N. Z. GoysayjtE.iT Oomjhssio.xjbb re Fhbtt Culturk). Thb Fab Nohth— Thb Nbw Village Settlement (Scheme — " Thrkb Ackes and a Cow--' — Thh Want of Sbitlebs with Capital — Why Bkitish Capital and EItIttKAKTB GO TO ASIEHICA — MANITOBA and Flo&ida coxpaxbd with New Zealand. The Minister of Lands is just now giving the Far North quite a "boom" with his Village Settlement scheme. Away up in the great valleys of the Hokianga district, hundreds of men, women, and children are being located. The last settlement, Herekino or False Hokianga, is quite a terra incognita, and till lately was the exclusive home of the Ngapuhi— the finest and best of all the native tribes— and the tui or parson-bird. Many people opine that the Government will be called upon to send relief expeditions to this settlement when winter fairly sets in, for it is practically isolated and h»is no communication with the outside world. Some 500 people have been settled in this wilderness. None, or very few, have any means, but the Government find money for them to build houses, and in winter provide them with work upon the roads, and will also give them fruit trees. "John Lundon," Mr Hobbs (the member for the district) told his constituents, ° also ' boosed ' them up at the expense of tbe Government," a proceeding whi-h he characterised as scandalous. It would be doubly so in Mr Hobbs' eyes as he is a Btaunch blue-ribbouite, and the redoubtable John makes no secret of the fact that hi* sole aim is to get into Parliament again vice Hobbs, and his only way of doing it is by Bwampiug the "missionary" influence which is a chief factor in Mr Hobbs' favour. Mr Lundon receives nothing for his services in connection with these special settlement schemes, other than bare expenses. Mr Lundon, however, deserves the credit of having been wonderfully successful in inducing people to nock away to these new settlements; his persuasive powers with a certain order is beyond all question. John Lundon is a distinct character, whether of that class that a Minister of the Crown should invest with practically unlimited power is a question upon which people may disagree. On the success of this scheme Mr Ballance stakes his reputation as a statesman, and should he fail to pave his way to glory with the aid of the Treasury, it will not apparently be for the want of a knowledge of that Spiuibh proverb which says that " There is no lock but that the golden key will open." The Auckland press laud Mr Ballance up to the skies, aud it would be rank hereby here to breathe a word against a scheme which has emptied the town of the unemployed and relegated the popular agitators aud the Henry George socialists to the — well, country. This idea of paying people to go upon the laud owes its conception no doubt to the celebrated proposal of Jesse Collins in the British Parliament " to give to agricultural labourers three acres and a cow," a proposal which lost that gentleman his Heat. As a temporary expedient for relieving the large towns of their surplus population during peiiods of exceptionally severe depression, the scheme is all that could be desired, but to adopt it for general use would mean the creation of a Crown tenantry that would immediately become an unknown quantity in politics, and would also burden the colony in an annual expenditure that could only be taken from loan moneys. It seems to me the Minister has got hold of a crude idea, and that he should go further afield for " pointers." When in Washington last year I heard the angry debate which took place in the Senate there over the bill proposing to stop aliens owning land in the United Btatos ; a measure brought in to put a stop to English sydicates and capitalists buying great areas of land for the purpose of forming colonies, the rents aud unearned increment accruing from which went out of the country to England. Nothing surprised mo more than to hear of the many millions of British capital that was invested in American lands, and since Brother Jonathan has shown his teeth in this way, no less than £5,000,000 of English capital has been put into Canadian land by " experimental farm co npanies," ap. they are called, but really colonising cumpauies. Every steamer tbat crosses the Atlantic takes some British farmers either to the States or to Canada. Now, why is no effort made to attract part of this stream to our shores ? Can we not offer the British farmer a better country, a better climate, and brighter projects than either ? Assuredly we can, and the sooner the Miuister of Lands drops his fads or tentative measures, or, at least hands them over to bis subordinates, and directs bis attention to the solid problem of attracting to New Zealand farmers with oapital, the better it will be, it appears to me, for the country and for his future reputation. What we want in this Northern country — aud I suppose 5 on want the same down South — are farmers with capital who can employ labour, and not men who having failed at most things have to be set up by the Government at the cost of the taxpayer. These capitalist farmers can be induced to come here if our Government will go to tho trouble of arranging the conditions of land settlement so as to compensate the difference of cost of passage as between England aud America, and England and New Zealand. The matter could be beßt arranged by the Minister himself going to America and England and learning the conditions and other particulars regarding land settlement in Canada and the States. While in England I met scores of fanners who informed me that they were paying rent out of principal, and would have to emigrate, but they did not know where to go to, because they heard such contradictory reports of all the different places. So-and-so's cousin, or nephew, or brother had gone here, there, or to the other place, and had spent a lot of money and came back Home stating things were worse there than at Home ; and as for the land and emigration agents— they were such liars that no reliance could be placed on anything they said. Canada and the States were the most attractive as being " nearest Home}" and costing least to go to ; Australia and New Zealand, from all accounts, were the best countries for British farmers, but it cost so much to get there. There is the whole thing in a nut-shell. We must give to the British farmer a concession in land to compensate him for the extra cost of passage, and if we can afford to not only give the very best of land away for nothing, as we are doing row up here in the North, and also pay a man to take it up, we can tasyy arrange matters to suit the nrcn Wtto fl #e#ars3 $ foaft tftfra wifo afjfiw,

If we can afford to give away borrowed money togthe carpet-bag settler for house-building and roal-rr*kiug, we can afford to as.-ist capitalist farmers to come to tfie colony by paying part of their passage money. This is a matter, whoever, that no Minister will appreciate to the full until he goes over the different countries, and also meets face to faoe the British farmer, and were he to go to England and personally see the farmers, he could do more than a shipload of agents. He would learn in the first place by such a trip the immense advantages which this colony offers over any district in America, and he would at once be impressed with the necessity of taking steps at once to inform the British farmers of the difference in conditions and prospects of those countries competing with us for emigrants. In Manitoba, to which so many British farmers have gone, he would find that for seven months in the year the ground is frozen and covered " with snow j and though splendid crops of wheat and corn can be raised without manure the oost of getting it to a market is so great that the farmer can merely exist, and has no other means of raising a revenue. How a man can go in for a dozen different modes of raising a revenue, and can always depend on one yielding well, while none should fail to pay. Yet 20 farmers will go to Manitoba for the one that goes to New Zealand. Take the wonderful prairie lands of lowa, &c., and the same thing applies— only the one crop can be raised. Water is always scarce, fuel has to be carted long distances at great cost, and periodically che demon tornado bweeps over the plains, and wrecks farmhouses, stacks, &c, as well as killing man and beast. Last year, the day after I crossed the prairie lands of lowa and Illinois, a tornado swept down the Missouri valley, killing over 50 people. What sort of a country is that for a Britisher to go to? Florida is another locality to which hundreds of Britishers have been attracted, and 10 out of every 12 regret ever having seen this "boss" land of malaria, snakes, and crocodiles. For eight months out of the year white residents have to take quinine every morning as a preventive against ague. In winter the climate of Florida is charming, but in Rummer it is only fit for the blacks. Were our Minister of Landa to take a run through these countries and see for himself how new settlers fare there, he would be so impressed with the immeasurable superiority of the advantages offered by New Zealand, that be would leave no stone unturned to induce British farmers to direct their eyes to the Britain of the South. Froude says we are weighed down with debt, and that taxation is so heavy that repudiation is hinted at. To a New Zealander this statpment seems ridiculously funny. It was in England I read " Oceana." I was staying with some farmers down in Oxfordshire, and they told me of the hard times they were experiencing, and, speaking of taxes, I learnt that one of them — a gentleman farming 1000 acres of land— had to pay for school rates alone £75 a-year, and that it was the usual thing for farmers to pay in taxes (exclusive of income tax) about 7s in the pound on their rentals. Here (leaving out the property tax) a farmer pays in taxation road rates not exceeding Is in the pound on hit* rental, and Froude talks about over-taxation and repudiation. Why, in the United States, where so many Englishmen go to farm, taxation, even in direct rates, is three to four times as heavy as in New Zealand, and yet few Englishmen are aware of the fact, for Froude, and such as he, persist in and out of season in libelling our adopted country. The property tax in the United States is usually about 3£d in the pound, and everything is taxed ; there fs no exemption, as here. These things should be made known to the British people, and if our Minister of Lands would go there for a year, he would be able to do the colony more practical good than could bo squeezed out of a hundred experimental land laws. I had no intention at the start of driving so deeply into this land question, but the fact of Mr Ballance giving away with a lavish hand great block of the finest land in the colony — lund which, if put to its legitimate use, the growing of fruit, would realise more pounds, per acre than any Crown rural lands ever sold in the colony — suggested to my mind the possibility of attracting to this colony men with capital ; for, were they obtained, the unemployed difficulty could be left to right itself. Already the New Zealand Herald has discovered that, although many of the men have cleared portions of their land, they have no money with which to buy grass seed, and the question arises, of course, what are they to do ? They will of a certainty go to Government, and when the grass feed is available, the same difficulty will arise again in regard to the want of a cow, and then Mr Ballance will be able to carry the Jesse Collins scheme out to the letter. A country, with such a climate as we have here, where every fruit known to the civilised world can be grown with the greatest ease and in the greatest abundance, where a man can work out in the open with his coat off all the year around, where cattle and sheep never want housing in the severest winter, and where the pasture is sufficient to support them atjall times without root food ; where the land is good, the climate as soft as that of Italy, as healthy as any spot on this fair earth ; where the scenery reflects on every hand in marvellous beauty and magnificence the noble work of a great Creator, should not require such artificial bolstering up as that now offered by Mr Ballance. There are thousands and thousands of men with ample means scattered about the British empire, who would eagerly seize the opportunity of acquiring a home in this fair land of ours, did they know of its merits. That they do not know of such a place is the fault of the Government.