LAND VALDES, EDUCATION AND PRODUCTION.

Southland Times, Issue 20043, 3 December 1926, Page 5

LAND VALDES, EDUCATION AND PRODUCTION.

To the Editor.

Sir, —Beyond a continual assertion that high land values are the cause of trouble in our agricultural industry and a steady railing at speculators, middlemen, etc., we are getting no practical help from either Southerner or W. C. Denham in this matter. I have put forward general principles as to what is wrong and a remedy. In addition I have cited a specific case, the remedy for which is a general remedy for depression in the industry and more, a part remedy for lack of settlement. I propose to leave this question unless further material comes forward bearing on the subject in hand. I have however two points to bring to the notice of both Southerner and W. C. Denham. On page 7 of your issue of November 25 appear certain expressions of opinion by the Minister of Lands. I suggest the points made by this Minister be studied carefully and at length. It appears the cost of production is uppermost in the Hon. A. D. McLeod’s mind as a very serious problem needing solution to assist the farmer. “On the one hand settlers are receiving a bare pre-war return for their produce, while on the other the cost of practically every farm necessity has increased by not less than 100 per cent.” Exactly, get those costs down and land values will rise to their proper level, a level more in accordance with the cost of bringing land to production to-day. Is there any other way of doing it except by lifting Customs taxation off the land? The second point is an expression of opinion made by the Member for Wallace on September 6,1926 —“ There are some who say that the farmer’s difficulty lies not so much in the nature of the necessary credit, but in the fact that land is too dear. I say that is not so. The price of land must not be below to-day’s cost of the improvements on that land. ... I contend that cheap land is often dangerous. . . . The farmer must be rewarded for his improvements, or improvements will not be made.”

Quite so. The farmer I specified spends £lO per acre on improving land. He can neither sell it nor get a living off it. Relieve him of Customs taxation and he can both get a living off it or sell it. As a matter of fact he would not want to sell it; he would come out from the town where he is now working and settle on it. Quite recently a particularly prominent banker stated in Canada that New Zealand was suffering from inflated land prices. Not, it will be noted, from inflated interest rates, inflated bank managers’ salaries or wages. All these items of course ought to be at least 60 per cent, over pre-war, but the farmer’s capital and his wages must not follow the same lines according to this gentleman. The final proposition I put forward is that land values never were inflated; they rose in accordance with the rise of other values, and they have fallen because among all other New Zealand values they have had to carry the burden of war costs.

I am very sorry that, judging from his letter in your issue of November 23, the truth did not prove very palatable to “Less Production.” However, if the last word will comfort him, he can have it.

Your correspondent “Old Hand” ought really to have read my reply to him more carefully. I concede all his propositions about the importance of our agricultural industry, but what I did not concede was that the industry ought to be carried on by the unremunerated labour of women and children, and by cutting down the education of the young people. I pointed out that the young people can be .kept on the farm by giving them the same general way of life they can get in the towns. This centres mainly round the pay envelope. I further pointed out that in general the farmer does not and cannot pay his family for their labour. The remedy is to get the farmer a proper return so that he can give his family on the farm what they can and do get in the town. To do this we want more education and not less. We want this because the “old hands” have allowed the towns to collar a larger share of production than their services warrant and the farm is thus unable to retain the young people. They follow the wealth into the towns. The industry is not going to benefit by being staffed by untaught, half-educated dolts. The farmer of the future requires to be both educated and accomplished in order to handle the problems which are ahead. He requires to use his head quite as much as his hands. What the country requires is not a staff of instructors coaching up a mob of clodhoppers, but an army of highly skilled tillers of the soil stepping out in unison and forging ahead with their own wits, science, and experience. You won’t get that by keeping Jim on the farm at £1 a week and tucker while Jack can look forward to £1 a day in the town.

Customs taxation is the factor which brings about that difference, and if “Old Hand” can’t see it the Minister of Lands can, because it seems to me he is cocking his eye on the writer’s hobby-horse. Exactly what sentiments “Farmer’s Wife” intends to convey by the poem she contributes to the matter it is difficult to decide. If she intends to comfort the farmer with the idea that he is a fine fellow to feed all the various people mentioned, and that the satisfaction he gets out of doing so ought to content him, she can rest assured all these other people will agree with her. But this kind of reward is giving us fewer farmers and more merchants, and as human nature is will continue to do so. There does not appear to be anything noble or - praiseworthy in sowing and letting the other fellow reap. Certainly there is satisfaction to be got out of a crop, but what the farmer wants is the satisfaction which a proper reward will give him; that is, the opportunity and material to move on to better things. The meek may be blessed, but the earth, and its fruits are enjoyed and held by the mortgagee and merchant rather than the farmer. There are poems which would suit the situation better and perhaps help to incite the energy which idea is behind the writing of these letters.— I am, etc.,

SLUM CUIQUE.