LAND SETTLEMENT.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15970, 12 November 1919, Page 4

LAND SETTLEMENT.

The Eeform Government’s system of placing soldiers on the land is proving a most expensive undertaking, and raises the question whether the results justify the huge expenditure. A return issued by the Minister of Lands discloses the fact that there were on October Ist 740 soldiers settled on "settlement land,” and 676 on Crown and national endowment land, to which have to be added 1865 soldiers who have acquired land under the Discharged Soldiers’ Settlement Amendment Act. This makes a grand total of 3290 soldiers placed on rural land, and their holdings aggregate 1,162,000 acres. But to purchase properties for these men cost £3,152,000 and another £5,629,000 was advanced to finance them, and also, apparently, the soldiers who were helped to purchase houses. That is to Hy, to settle 3290 soldiers, and provide houses for 2416 others, and assist 100 others who had their own freeholds, wo have spent £8,782,000. One naturally asks whether this has been worth while, whiter it would not have been better to have thought out and adopted long ago a policy that would not have involved so much purchasing of improved land at high prices. The Minister sets out the average advance for purchase of private laud, and discharge of mortgages under section 2 of the Discharged Soldiers’ Settlement Act as £1736, the average advance for stock and improvements on current account, £630. That is to say, the soldiers so settled have cost on the average over £2300. Prices for land for these men have been as high as £6O and £3O an acre. We may note, too, that in commenting on the Departmental report, the Lyttelton Times points out that the total expenditure on land in the South Island during the financial year was £128,935. “And yet it is in the South Island, and particularly in Canterbury, that the greatest aggregation of estates has taken place, and where the average area per holding is highest New Zealand sorely needs a new land policy.” Of course it docs, and afl these figures should press its necessity upon electors. The Government makes much of the number of soldiers it has put on the land. It forgets that these men would have gone on the land if there had been no 'war, and that while they are slowly being accommodated, the civilian land seeker and the immigrant are getting no attention. And what it is doing is mostly in the direction of buying improved land at high prices, while large areas of unimproved land are awaiting the axe, the plough, the road, and the railway.