LAND AGGREGATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2714, 21 March 1906, Page 5

LAND AGGREGATION.

(Tapanui Couriei.) One of the great evils in connection with the settlement of land in this colony is the absorption of several farms or holdinsr" by one individual, thus tending towards tl.e gradual building up of large estates und the ultimate creation of a wealthy landed aristocracy. It seems useless for Government to :-ay that a single 6ettler shall not acquire more than 320 acres of firstclass, 040 of second-grade, or 3000 acred of purely pastoral country, as the people aio always stiiv.ng for more. Large e-tat<-* have been frequently opesiecl in this district for clo=or settlement, but there is id actuil increase in population of late >oars. simply becaur-e the purchase of adjoinins farms or small holdings by neighbours fc going on steadily all the time, and the- big men are "eating up" the little ones. Th« survey of 140e ha? not led to the increase of homesteads it should have done, because a certain proportion of the sections was acquired by persons who never intended to reside on them, as required by the act; and others selected wit 1 a \':ew to buying out their neighbours as opportunity offered. Some families have dummied in a wholesale manner, and hold several sections without horned -ads on any of them; and the Land for Settlements Act is generally infringed without interference by the Land Board, who ought to declare forfeited some of the sections that have been taken up for speculative purposes. Right throughout this district there is the object lesson of decreasing population and fallir^ off in school attendance, simply owing to the aggregation ot farms by both freeholders and leaseholders, and the remedy is yet to seek. If there is no nlte ration of the land laws, the wJiolo country will revert to large estates, and then a class of landowners will arise 93 in Great Britain ; and the time for sues alteration. H much shorter iV - peopl« think. Already some farmers have in- ... -^

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creased +heir holdings from 200 acres originally to -nearly 2000; and this farming era only commenced on a large scale 30 years ago. If the next three decades see similar aggregation of holdings, then out yeomen population will have become small, and the few remaining landowners "social pests." Our legislators will certainly have to move quickly to prevent further accumulation of many farms by individuals, otherwise the bulk of the Tapanui land ■will once again be> in the hands of big monopolists.