Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price 1d. WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1885. Big Estates and Half Starved Children.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1686, 27 May 1885, Page 2

Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price Id. WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1885. Big Estates and Half Starved Children.

We Lave been reading the full report of Sir George Grey’s speech at Auckland, delivered under the auspices of the Liberal Association. It was a wonderfully eloquent address, and we can readily understand why it was received with the greatest enthusiasm and admiration —albeit some of its statements will not bear the ordeal of a searching and critical examination. Still, the speaker made some very strong points, as for instance, in his review of the past system of dealing with Crown Lauds in Canterbury. Sir George sketched out a scene for the people to look at. It was this: Mr Ballance, the Minister for Lands, was in Christchurch and a Press reporter interviewed him. Their talk was about the distress which prevailed in Canterbury, aud in answer to questions, Mr Ballance .thus expressed his views :

“ I cannot help thinking it is the way in which your Canterbury land system has been carried out. That is the curse of the place and a large cause of the stagnation of the town. Men have taken up all the spare land in the back country, and stagnation has sent in. The worst of it is that we have in Canterbury such a difficulty in finding what is wanted—that is, land. It is-nonsense ta say the distress here is all among the loafers. There is quiet want. Honest, sober, industrious fellows, married men with families, have come to me, and put the case so soberly and plainly that I am convinced the matter is serious. I have heard plenty of, people here abuse the unemployed for not jumping at work at 4s and 4s fid a day. Gut some of these fellows who came to me were married men with six children, 8s to pay for rent, and were dependent on odd jobs —two days of the week idle, perhaps.”

Taking these frank statements of Mr Ballance as his ground work, Sir George Grej proceeded to show that all the existing distress and stagna tiou in Canterbury arose from the monstrous system of dealing with Grown Lands which had prevailed during the past, and under which enormous tracts of country had been taken up by capitalists aud runholders, thus shutting out the great body of the people from settling upon the soil. This system has proved the curse of the place, and its result is the difficulty of getting laud to relieve the people. But ■while Mr Ballance bemoans this state of affairs, yet, as Sir George Grey points out, he and his fellow Ministers recently offered a million acres to a Foreign Company to gat the West Coast Middle Island Railway constructed The llagrant inconsistency of this action as conpared with Mr Ballanco’s professed eager desire to settle the people upon the land is sullicic-nlly obvious. Then Bir George, with bitter sarcasm, refers in the oiler rf the Government to give men with families work at 4s Gd a day. On this point he says;

"What does this 4s fid a day come to ? I made a calculation ei that, which I think Mr Ballance did not, because he only said he thought it hard for these people to live. But if you work it out, it is this ; 4s 6J a day gives 27s a Week for six days’ work, and 8s is the rent they had to pay, This man has a wife and ml children. Take the rent away i nd that leaves 19s, On the average, they Lse two days a week, that is 9s. Take that away, yea haw 10s lei' 1 to keep his wife and rix children ; that la 2a u day per head to each individual of that family, for food, clothing, medicines, lire, light and everything that human beings want. (Cheers.) Very well. Now go with mo again. Travelling into one of these houses of that two peace a day a head family, think of those people! \Vhatis the ford eaten, what are the clothes worn, what the firing in cold weather, what are the comforts'in sickness, what are the means for burying a dead child perishing for want of proper food aud

comfort? Ask yourselves, is it not a pitiful thing that we as men ought not to try a remedy to put an end to it. There is something vary touching in the picture of patient suffering of grievous privation, which is thus presented by Sir George Grey. The picture owes most of its force to the stern hard truths which it discloses. We are acquainted with an individual who tried to maintain a family of seven children on a pittance of 22s and 6d a week, and the experi meat meant this An insufficient supply of the very plainest food was thus provided for nine human beings in all, A rigidly limited supply of firing and candle could also be got. When that much had been accomplished by the exercise of the most rigid care and the severest economy, there was not a single penny left for any other purpose. A child could not get a pair of boots mended in order to get to school; sick children had to do without either medicine or medical treatment. There wasn’t a farthing available for clothing, and the family just dragged along an existence which could by no means be called “ living ” in the sense of having even the moat ordinary wants supplied. Yet we have known more than one Minister of the Crown enjoying a salary of £ISOO a year and many other liberal allowances, talk and write quite complacently about the starvation pittance of 4s 6d a day being sufficient to maintain working men and their families. We should like to see some of those “ great men ” put into a tworoomed cottage and allowed to try the experiment of feeding and clothing their families on is 6d a day—less the deduction of non-working days. They would not be starved outright, but they would learn what the meaning was of coarse food, occasional “ short commons,” and want of sufficient warmth. It is a shame and disgrace that in a splendid young country like New Zealand, with its fine soil and climate, that any Government should offer men such a starvation wage as 4s (id a day. Mr Ballance and Sir George Grey have both fully described the evil which exists, but they have not been able to suggest any adequate remedy for it. Certaiuly, they both propose remedies—-of a sort—but these do not sufficiently meet the difficulty. Mr Ballance proposes to set apart small blocks of land near railways, and let them in ten acre sections, on perpetual lease, to laborers who will take them up and become permanent residents thereon, paying a small rent, and having that rent raised as the land is improved and increased in value. The idea is that the men should work for wages by getting employment from the better off class of 'surrounding settlers, and when not so working they should improve their own leased holdings. This plan might work well enough if the sections consisted of first class open agricultural laud, and if there were plenty of well to do settlors round about to give the ten acre men work. It would bo difficult to get all those conditions fulfilled, o give men ten acn sections of poor land in a district where work was scarce would simply be to leave them and their families to starve. On this point our contemporary, the New Zealand Herald, justly remarks

To most men the ten-acre perpetual leasing system which the Minister of Lands is attempting to introduce will prove the opposite of an advantage. Tho truth is that small farms under the ordinary process of agriculture will not pay. It is essential first of all that the land be really productive ; that' it is not of less extent than a hundred acres ; that the occupant be able as a rule to find all the labour within the limits of his own family ; and that he have an easy and cheap access to a steady market, before a living can be made of husbandry. Tho misfortune of this country, in the estimation of some, is that its acreage has fallen into the hands of a few; but the remedy for the evil will not be found in going to the opposite extreme by making the holdings so limited that the possession of them means semistarvation.

Sir G-eorge Grey’s remedy for the evil differs from that of Mr Ballance, Sir George Grey says :

I say I shall bring in a Bill which requires —that for every thousand acres of land a man has he shall support one labourer at full wages throughout tho whole year upon it (loud aud prolonged cheers}, and the man with 20,000 acres shall keep 200 families not all for sheep ; something for men ; in God's name i say it ! (Prolonged cheers.) There is partly justice at least for these children. There is a home where fair wages can be earned, aud whence they may go forth and buy land iu some place where they like afterwards. There, I say, justice cau come in.

This is eloquently sot forth, bat the plan is, to a certain extent, impracticable. Such a proposal might prove beneficial to the State in cases in which men have acquired largo tracts of land at a low price, avid on which they employ little labor, but as a general rule it would be found impracticable to dictate to land owners how many men they should employ That, plan may therefore be left out of consideration as there is no chance of its ever being tried in practice. “The thing needed in this co'.onv,” remarks a contemporary, “ is some system which would secure a more profitable distribution of-the land, bv moans of which the occupancy of it would become tho object of a general desire on the part of tho inhabitants, and the tilling of it he rendoied sufficiently reiaunoraLivo.” Such a system has not yet boon devised by any of the land law reformers who have arisen in this colony, aud moat assuredly the plans suggested by Sir George Grey and Mr Ballance fail to meet the conditions and requirements of this important question and grave difficulty. On another occasion we shall return to this i,abject with the view of considering in what way the evils indicated can bo remedied.