A NUT FOR LAND NATIONALISERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2923, 23 March 1910, Page 9

A NUT FOR LAND NATIONALISERS.

The wiseacres who imagine land to be entirely a product of Nature, which the State would do well to annex, might finr' themselves tied to a remarkably awkward white elephant if they ever succeeded in carrying out. their wishes. Meanwhile they might aave themselves and other people a good deal of trouble if they would study a little object-lesson which is being shown on the ofchef side of the Atlantic. It is well known that any emigrant to the United States or Canada can have a free grant of 160 acres of land upon condition of settling upon and cultivating it. The land, in other word., is worth absolutely nothing to start with. That the value is, in most cases, something less than nothing i-s proved by what is now taking place. The Canadian Pacific Irrigation and Colonisation Company—an offshoot of tne Canadian Pacifio Railwaje*—has taken up the enterprise of preparing farms for occupancy—building a house and fencing and breaking in a portion of the land; and the demand to purchase these farms, even including th® necessary profit to the company, is something like four times the supply. This means that, rather than take the undeveloped land, which is to be had for nothing, settlers prefer to take land that has been improved, paying a "nil pr-'ce for the improvement, and a profit besides. In other words, the entire value of land, 'n America, as in this country, consists in the capital that has been spent upon it.