HON.JOHN M'KENZIR ON HIS OWN LAND POLICY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2375, 7 September 1899, Page 7

HON. JOHN M'KENZIR ON HIS OWN LAND POLICY.

HIS VIEWS OF HIMSELF AND OF HIS LEGISLATION. .(Faoai Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, July 7. It Tvas only to be expected that Mr John •M'Kenzie would fail to escape tb.B interviewer. Since his arrival in this country the hon. gentleman has kept very quiet, but the reporter found him. out and extracted for a London paper a full column ' and a-half of information about New Zea- • land land experiments, a topic on which Mr M'Kenzie discoursed freely. First of all, however, let me give you the journalist's j description of your Minister for Lands. He . Bays : — j •" A very son of Anak. A living proof i of the statement that Antipodean r?g'.oi\s serve well to grow big men. Tall, bvoad- J shouldered, big, he makes the average Londoner look a Lilipntian by his side. ... . In the opinion of all who know southern j life, he is one of the ablest of the statesmen , of the Pearl of the Pacific, and in his own j sphere of land legislation he stands easily first." ( J I shall not trouble you with the interview an detail, for in it Air M'Kenzie traverses old ground in dealing with his land policy, , loans to settlers, and taxation. Some of j ■his remarks, however, I fancy, will come fresh to many New Zealanders. This is the keynote he strikes at the beginning : " Our idea in New Zealand," he said, "has been to keep the land for the people. In the early days of our history Government after Government, when it j wanted money, sold large blocks of ie>ritory to graziers and speculators', who allowed it to lie quite uncultivated and unopened up, merely running thousands of sheep on it." As to a Settlement, he says; " Great precautions have been taken in the Land for Settlements Act to avoid the possibility of corruption. . . . The Board of Experts first goes over the appli- | cants, weeding out the men of straw, and , those who have farms elsewhere or are ' otherwise unsuitable." > j This naturally led Mr M'Kenzie to speak i of the Cheviot estate, of which he said: I "We have to pay £10,000 a year as in- ) terest on the debentures, but the rents realise £14,000 a year, enough to pay all interest, to have paid off what we borrowed from the Treasury, and to form a sinking fund that will help to meet all the debentures as they fall due." As to village settlements, he held that quite 75 per cent cf \ those on them have prospered, and ex- j pressed himself as " amazed at the facility ■with which townsmen have taken to rtuwl life and have learned farming." One instance given by Mr M'Kenzie of the " way it works " in the village settlements I will quote. "A lady in a village small town," he said, "was earning a very poor living, just keeping herself from starvation by teaching music. There was a cobbler in the same town not doing well. They married, and took a holding in a village settlement. I want to see them in the second year of their new life. I came behind the wife as she" was trying to get a root out of the ground with an iron rod. I put my hand on the rod, and out came the root. 'Aye/ she said, turning round, and not recognising me, 'I wish I always had an arm like yours about.' She told me how she and her husband had prospered. He had built a house with sun-dried bricks, i and timber cut down from their own . ground. She showed me their pass-book, the figures revealing that that year they ihad made £60 from their strawberry crop aloue. They had planted hundreds of fruit trees, and each tree had its Latin name marked on it. In short, as she told me, they were as happy as the day was long, ! and the grim horror and want of life had vanished. j "Mr M'Kenzie," said the interviewer, ''you had better take care. Once this interview is published your office stairs will be besieged by poor Londoners wanting to go on your settlement." On reading this, one wonders whether •Mr M'Kenzie remembers the efforts made I by his Government to keep people from coming to the colony, except just the particular classes they themselves desired. I will pass over muoh that he said regarding his enthusiasm about what " his Government had done for the farmer," for you in the colony know it better than ! anyone at such a distance as is London from. New Zealand can know. So I will conclude, as did Ma 1 M'Kenzie, with a -little of his own personal feeling. ! Asked what he considered the reason of his success in the " remarkable legislation " •he had initiated, Mr M'Kenzie replied : *'. One great reason is that I have had eight years to carry it out. I was entering on a new path, where I had the experience of no other- land to guide me. With the utmost care, mistakes were yet made. Well, I was not too proud to learn from my mistakes, and to alter things as experience taught me. Another thing that helped me was that I am a practical farmer myself, and know even-thing by having gone through the work." When a man comes to me wanting an engagement as an expert, I can put half a dozen questions and find out if he really knows as much as he claims. When Igoon an 'estate I can judge for myself as to its condition. lam not dependent on the "words of others. And our legislation has been a success. Whatever Government may come in, the lines of our land reform "will be retained. I have just been redding the speeches and programmes in the - last election. None of the candidates, on either side, proposed to rescind our new land laws." "Doubtless you have been struck by- the 'condition of agricultural England?" asked jthe interviewer, " I have' not seen enougfh to pass an Opinion of the -whole. But I was sorely disappointed with my own country whep I visited it. Farming seemed to me to !have stood still, and the people went on 5n the same old ways of years ago. Now in New Zealand we are a progressive people. We experiment, we try new things, w« test the latest machinery, we

adopt -what proves best. But do far as I have seen, the farmers here are content with the old appliances and* old methods." was Mr M'Kenzie's conclusion to tliis "interview."