A NATIONAL POLICY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 53, 8 April 1914, Page 6

A NATIONAL POLICY.

THE STATE AND THE LAND Specially written for THE SUN. "VII. In looking for the lines of cleavage between the different political groups or parties in the Dominion, one is not long in discovering that the sharpest divisions of opinion relate to the tenure and ownership of land. Although the freeholders are in the ascendant and prominent members of the Liberal Party, including Sir Joseph Ward, have conceded that the policy of the immediate future must necessarily be one of the freehold within reasonable limits, the Labour Party stands as firmly as ever for the State ownership of land and the extinction of private property therein. Further than that, there are a great many persons outside the ranks of the Labour Party who hold the opinion that land ought either to be nationalised or the owners taxed out of existence. The prevalence of these views is due in the main to the extraordinary vogue enjoyed by theories, first popularised by John Stuart Mill and Henry George, regarding what is called the "unearned increments'' Then there are many others who, without going quite as far as the single tax extremists, clamour for subdivision, close settlement, and intensive cultivation, mainly because they believe that country life produces a better type of citizen than town life, and they want to see an exodus from the. cities "back to the land."

It is well worth while, therefore, devoting a fair amount of space in these columns to an lamination of the Dominion 's land system, to the truth or falsity of current theories regarding land ownership, and to the best means of improving the conditions under which land may be held and worked, not only to the advantage of the individual, but to the whole community. A VENDETTA. ' Owing mainly to the controversial energies of land nationalists and those newspapers who for years past have Been remorselessly carrying on a vendetta against the owners of land, many people are firmly convinced that land is monopolised in New Zealand; that thousands of would-be farmers are denied access to it, and that living is dear in the cities because of the present value of agricultural land;

* The actual facts are, of course, very different, but as few persons lay themselves, out to controvert plausible statemeutp , made, mainly for the purpose of exciting class hatred against landowners, it is not surprising that so . many should completely ■ mis-, conceive the truth regarding land and land ownership in the Dominion. It is easy to become the slave of a phrase, and people have had '' landmonopoly '' dinned into their ears so long that when anyone gets up and denies its existence they look at him as if he were, trying to argue, that the world is fiat. Yet the thing is quite capable of/proof. I There are plenty of real monopolies in New Zealand —monopolies that are a danger to the public welfare —but land monopoly is not , one of them. There are monopolies, . such .as exist in sugar refining, marine transport, and even in the newspaper business, that are as eompleteand watertight as it is possible for monopolies to be, but nothing of the sort can be said about land. The land is there for all to buy who have the means and inclination to do so, and if they don't go on the land it is beeause they haven 't the necessary money or the desire to become farmers. . The position is precisely the same as it is in any -other business. If a man does not buy a draper 's or a buteher's shop it is not a proof that there is a monopoly which prevents him doing $o; it is merely evidence that lie lacks the means or credit, or that he prefers some other way of making a living. And it would be just as reasonable for some zealous reformer to demand that the large draper or the large butcher should be subjected to a graduated tax on his turnover, to compel him to subdivide his big business into a number of small ones, as it is to demand the carving up' of the large land owner merely because he is a large land owner, and without regard to tlie circumstances of his particular case. LAND NATIONALIST IDEALS. ,

Moreover, it is not generally known that there is no country in the civilised world which can show such a remarkable of laud amongst its inhabitants as New Zealand can. In other words, there is no country that is so free from land monopoly as New Zealand.' Every now and then someone lays himself out to advocate intensive cultivation and small holdings, with the object of making New Zealand a second Belgium or Denmark. Interesting calculations are made to prove what an enormous rural population might be sustained if we farmed according to Danish or Belgian methods. The truth is that the proportion of the population owning and farming agricultural land in New Zealand is three times as large as it is in either Denmark or Belgium. That is not to say that we have nothing to learn from these countries; on the contrary, they can teach us a great deal regarding the raising and marketing of certain classes "of produce, but they have nothing to teach us in the matter of distributing the land amongst the people. The census of 19.11 showed that there were 317,176 men over 21 in New Zealand. In the same year there were over 150,000 persons owning the freehold of land. There are, of course, a great many women in whose names the titles to land are registered, and if we take the total adult population, which the census returns gave . as 587,003, it shows that there is one freeholder to every four persons who have reached the age of 21. And ytet there are persons who prate about land monopoly on the strength of a few large land-

I owners having survived the graduated tax. Apart from these facts, which anyone can verify for himself, there still remains a land problem to be dealt with. It is vitally important to all that the country should have a good land system; that the land should be productively farmed, and that the agricultural conditions should be sufficiently attractive to induce men of energy and industry to go on the land for the purpose of making homes for themselves and developing the country at the same time. It is a great public misfortune, therefore, that there should be so much persistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation in regard to the land question. For years it has been the happy hunting-ground of the faddist, the visionary, the reformer, with violent prejudices and little knowledge, and the enthusiast who thinks that he carries under his hat a scheme for solving the land problem and ushering in the millennium immediately afterwards. LAND NATIONALIST IDEALS. Correct diagnosis 4 is always essential to successful treatment, and this is as true of the land problem a.s of anything else. The question must be looked at rationally and from a Com-mon-sense standpoint if it is to be gripped and mastered. Jt is no use approaching it with preconceived ideas and a fixed determination to saddle land-owners with the blame for everything we are dissatisfied with, from the high cost of living t6 the National; Debt.

Twenty years ago, the Government of the day made some changes in the land laws by abandoning the freehold policy of their predecessors and affirming the principle of Stateownership, which, of course, involved the creation of a ntraierous Grown tenantry. The men responsible for this change were palpably under the influence of ideas popularised by landnationalist "writers and others who discovered the ' 'unearned' increment. 7 ' In pursuance of the ideal' of State-; ownership, million? of money were borrowed abroad for the repurchase -of land, and persons were settled on it at an enormous cost to the State. The bulk of this land was leased for 999 ; years, on highly-advantageous terms to the tenant. There was no provision for revaluation, and as the. bulk of the transactions took place ;at a time when values were low, the • State soon found that it had made an amazingly bad bargain. It had locked up its capital to little purpose; it had failed to get any of the "unearned ment"; and the only person who benefited was the fortunate Crown tenant., The most that: coulcl. be, said for the land policy of the 'nineties was that it facilitated settlement and hastened the subdivision that. became inevitable as prices of produce rose and the success ■of refrigeration gradually changed the character of farming in New Zealand. (To be continued).