THE PELORUS GUARDIAN, AND MINERS' ADVOCATE FRIDAY, 27th JULY, 1906. A LAND BOOM MORAL.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 17, Issue 59, 27 July 1906, Page 4

THE PELORUS GUARDIAN, AND MINERS' ADVOCATE FRIDAY, 27th JULY, 1906. A LAND BOOM MORAL.

The rush for the unearned increment —whether per medium of stocks and shares, “ sweep ” tickets, land values, or otherwise—is just as much a feature of New Zealand life as it is in other .parts of the world. Human nature seems to require some such stimulus as is afforded by each or all of these gambling speculations—for now that it has become fashionable to decry the beneficial effects of the totalisator on the breed of horses its advocates have extended the classification of the term “ gambling ” to include every form of speculation where the speculator expects to get “something for thing ” as Sir Robert Stout \so euphemistically termed it. Alarmlis being expressed in Wellington at tne spread of the local land “ boom,” and the consequent inflation of prices to a point far beyond what is justified by the most remunerative utilisation of the land. The moralists perceive in this “boom” the outbreak of the gambling instinct in a deplorable form, and if rumour is to be believed their apprehension of the results of the craze is fully warranted. Never in the history of Wellington have there been so many embezzlements, defalcations, and similar unlawful methods of obtaining money, within so brief a period; and whether these lapses are attributable to the “ get-rich-quick ” allurements of the land syndicates, or to other totally different causes, the land is burdened with them all. In America the speculation in land values has reached such a height as to become a national danger, and in the June number of the National Review Mr Maurice Low gives some account of it. “ Men who closely watch conditions and are able to foretell with almost an invariable exactitude economic movements by the waves of commodity prices,” he says, “ say that the enormous speculation in land now going on in every part of the United States presages the end of the period of prosperity and the beginning mf the seven lean years.” The argunrent is based on the belief, which has become almost an economic axiom in America, that real estate is the last thing to feel the influence of inflation, and that after stocks and commodities are forced by speculation to a price above their intrinsic value, speculation finally turns to real estate, and then comes the crash, Every great panic in the United States, we are told, has witnessed these successive stages of wild i speculation. The cost of living, it has been officially announced, is higher now than it has been in the last sixteen years. North and south, east and west, continues Mr Low, bring the same reports of tremendous activity in real estate and building operations, of property changing hands before the deeds are recorded, of fortunes made in a day. In New York, where prices for real property are fairly well established, the speculation is not less

active than in the “ boom ” town 3 of the west, where the value of a plot of land will double over night and quadruple in the succeeding day. In Pittsburg real estate “ is the absorbing topic in the banks, in the workshops, in the street cars, and 'in the homes. Every man with a thousand dollars or upward is dabbling in it.” In Illinois farm lands have advanced fifty per cent, in the last year or two. “ With the exception of the boom days in the early eighties, the real estate business in Minnesota has never been so active as at present,” is the report from that State. Bankers are frankly admitting their anxiety, and as an enormous amount of money is borrowed for the land transactions the bare possibility of a collapse is regarded with alarm. The “boom” of 1890 1 in Victoria left that State almost high and dry when the “burst” came, and only those who had experience of its effects can realise the widespread nature of the ruin and desolation that followed in its train. The disease has, luckily, not yet spread to every principal portion of this colony, and it should bo the earnest prayer of every true colonist that contagion should be checked.