The Sun 42, WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1929. HARDSHIP ON THE LAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 803, 25 October 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42, WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1929. HARDSHIP ON THE LAND

THERE is a lesson for New Zealand legislators and enthusiastic pleaders for land settlement at any cost in the abrupt defeat of another Government in Australia. The Nationalist Ministry in Victoria, under the leadership of Sir William McPherson, has been compelled to seek a dissolution because of a snap adverse vote against it in the Legislative Assembly. The hostile motion itself was a mere formality seeking adjournment of the House, but behind it, in the open rather than in party ambush, there was a strong force of discontent and something like despair. This disruptive power demanded and secured a scapegoat for the lamentable results of inefficient control of land settlement and the adoption of optimistic and extravagant schemes for increasing agricultural production as the best road to prosperity. The Nationalist Ministry, which succeeded the Labour Government about eleven months ago, was indicted politically for failure to provide adequate relief for settlers who, as asserted by the speaker for the raiding party—a gentleman with the appropriate name of Mr. Harold Glowery—were suffering great hardships because of bad seasons. It can be said fairly that, for years past, any Opposition could have made a similar charge against any one of the successive Governments, for the simple reason that each Administration in turn had followed the lead of its predecessor and did no more or no less to bring about a satisfactory eud to a serious financial position, due largely to the practice of squandermania on expensive land settlement projects and ambitious irrigation works long before their time. It has been admitted officially that the record of closer settlement in Victoria at a high initial cost is a story of abandoned farms and heavy losses of capital. The Royal Commission on soldier settlement reported losses exceeding £23,000,000. Then the annual deficit on State irrigation settlement schemes in Victoria alone is about £600,000. In the distant and rather arid Mallee district a sustenance grant of £50,000 a month has been recommended as the minimum need of settlers. Within the term of the ill-fated McPherson Administration a sum of £500,000, mostly dead loss, has been spent on the alleviation of farmers’ financial hardships. Two million pounds sterling has been spent on the canned fruits industry on the irrigated lands along the Upper Murray River, and the orchardists are in a worse plight than ever before. It has been recommended by a commission that there should he no more planting of fruit trees and vines until better markets for the products have been obtained. No one denies that agricultural production is essential to any State, but it should be recognised by the clamant pleaders for more and still more land settlement that profitable manufactures, employing thousands of workers who, with their families, buy a great proportion of farm products at good prices, should be neither discouraged nor neglected. For the past thirty years the Governments of Victoria have fostered the practice of the Closer Settlement Act throughout the State. Success was easy and fairly assured, except in seasons of bad drought, so long as new settlement was near the seaboard, hut in recent years the necessity for developing settlement? on arid and distant areas has increased risks and multiplied the individual losses to a colossal aggregate. And all the time the politicians, in various stages of good intention and bad bewilderment, have yielded to the cry of importers and economists that increased production from the land alone could and would save Australia from financial depression. Though a notable effort lias been made to develop Australian manufacturing industries, the Commonwealth still buys £150,000,000 worth of goods every year from abroad. It is perfectly true that both the manufacturers and their employees have abused tariff protection, but that defect surely has been not so much a weakness of the system as a defect of political control. Now, Victoria, like all the other .States in the Commonwealth, has to face the day of reckoning for lavish and reckless expenditure. The financial situation is serious and may bring more acute suffering than the hardship that has brought about the defeat of the Victorian Nationalist Government. A remedy will not be found in the New Zealand Government’s foolish policy of increasing taxation. The formidable sum of unproductive expenditure will have to he tackled and redueed, and enterprise encouraged to find profitable expansion in local manufactures. STREET COLLECTIONS TIIE annual street collections are now to be six in number, excluding Poppy Day, which is not considered with the others. The City Council’s latest decision on this point seems to indicate that on one point the council has weakened. Last time it discussed the question it decided that the collections should be six, and it was inferred at the time that Poppy Day should be one of these. This question of street collections is one that is difficult to regulate on account of the humanitarian motives of those who arrange them. Their position is a reflex of the deficiencies in a sadly ordered world. There is such a host of unfortunates to be cared for, so much charitable work to be done, and so little money to do it all with! Perhaps in an ideal community the work now handled by these generous people who give time and energy to worthy causes would be undertaken by the State. But while the State, legitimately or otherwise, shirks its responsibilities, the charitable and humanitarian organisations must have funds or else they must cease their operations. At present the societies rely on the street-collection system as. a staple means of raising funds, but of nine organisations which subsist largely, or at least partly, on funds raised by this method, two at least are now to be excluded every year. The effect upon their activities will be watched with some interest by close observers. Indeed, the City Council itself, as the body which authorises the collections, would do well to watch the result. If the societies thus affected are forced to curtail their operations, the sequel will be lamentable. But if the exigency causes them tq* discover some new but effective way of raising funds, by bazaar or one of the other methods favoured of old, then it will he a reasonable inference that others might do the same. The truth is that street collections are the most popular way of raising money because they are not only the most effective, but also the easiest. They involve no very arduous preparation or prior organisation. A company of willing helpers is mobilised, collection-boxes are handed out, and the good work begins. It is a pleasant enough business to all concerned, including the cheerful giver, as long as it does not pall; but here in Auckland there is a grave suspicion that the public is satiated with such appeals. The seven collections now authorised by the council are too many in the eyes of the city retailers, and they are too many in the eyes of the public. The inevitable effeet must be lower returns from most appeals, and this will certainly be the case unless the collections authorised are spread over the whole year, instead of grouped in what seems a very short season, as lias been the recent practice.