The Waikato Times. With which is incorporated The Waikato Argus. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1919. POLITICAL INERTIA

Waikato Times, Volume 91, Issue 14237, 11 December 1919, Page 4

The Waikato Times. With which is incorporated The Waikato Argus. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1919. POLITICAL INERTIA

The necessary but by no means harmless politician is busy posting the records of his good deeds done in the body of last Parliament both before and after the twain, Liberal and Reform, were made one in that desirable though somewhat illegitimate union called the National Cabinet. ' It is not extraordinary that some progressive legislation has been enacted: It would be extraordinary if it were not so. The claims of contending parties to the credit is not worth serious investigation. Were the whole of the credit due to one party alone it would not excite the envy of those who were worthy of the name "Liberal", in other Parliaments. However that may be the country is still in need of brief and drastic legislation to deal with taxation, settlement, land aggregation and profiteering. It will be noticed that these obtrusive problems were somehow avoided, or so carefully camouflaged that they were

not "spotted" by ordinary members. Whim we mention profiteering, admittedly a most difficult problem, not te be settled off-hand, we mean all those processes that are employed to exploit this country either by our own or outside traders. Taxation on income ceases just where it should begin to be most effective from a State point of view. There can be no defence put up by anyone for a gradation that ceases at a small percentage and very low rate of income. The gradation should be continued as in Britain, until

on the million mark the country would be collecting in taxation the major part of accumulating wealth. Equal attention should bVpaia to death dues. The advertised accumulations of wealth under this heading have a very disquieting influence upon militant labour, which is scarcely to he wondered at So far as" settlement goes, the tenures ' are good and offer a sufficient option. These are trophies won in the chase by ancient Liberalism, with the exception of the right to freehold, a good right, but one under which re-aggre-gation has become an iniquity and a national peril. The law is all right, but, the administration of the law is bad. Native .Ministers and ox-Ministers tel!

us that native interests are being bought up in the Urewera Country, that "No M;in' s Land" which still remains an interprovincial barrier, and that when all possible interests are acquired the land will be offered for settlement.

This means that the Urewera settler, like settlers in other localities, will have to carry the unacquired Maori interests upon his back. Two hundred thousand acres of country will be required by taxation, which will naturally fall upon it for cost of roads, bridges, fences, clearings and cultivations, to keep that other national drone of equal acreage remaining unsettled and await-' ing the unearned increment. In the old days surveyors were sent out to survey native, Crown and confiscated lands far in advance of settlement. Some of these got shot. They learned to look on shooting as incidental to the calling. To-day the "hands off" policy is being pursued. There is no reason, absolutely none so far as the unsophisticated voter can see, why the principle, of compulsory acquirement should not be applied to great areas like the Urewera Country, that never did" and never will maintain a large native population. We have compulsorily taken lands for settlement, settled and improved lands i from British owners, and. cut them up into small holdings, but the great areas : of unoccupied—we wish to stress the word—the great areas of unoccupied native country have for years been I tapu, and they rojay remain so for years to come so far as present appearances indicate. ■ To put matters bluntly, anyone whe is the friend of progress and sincerity knows that the proceedings in regard to titles, land acquisition, appeals, etc;;, provided for in native legislation are mostly bumbug, and that the native interests are exploiting our own. The. country has suffered from the astuteness of Native Ministers, and representatives, of native interests, which have.led to the chec-quer-coard or, gridiron r .form of settlement, here a piece*occupied and there a piece occupied, with' the great bulk obtrusively andi offensively non-pro-ductive, waiting the advance of civilisation purchased at the cost of the pioneers! We want this country settled straight out "in a face." The Army' takes its railway along with it,'metals laid almost to the trenches. In the

name of reason— : no, we will put It otherwise, in the. name of business — is there any reason why settlement should not take its railway with it. It is time the days of "pioneering" were over and done with—that sort of political insanity that thrust settlements like Te Rau-a-Moa and Firewood Creek into the bush a quarter of a century ago. We are still rubbing shoulders with the same kind of politician as was responsible for that, who belongs not to the Stone but to the Mud age, for such things are even'now being done. The Minister announces so many acres settled to the end of the financial year. He is most careful not to publish any record of the many empty houses standing in bush clearings as monuments to the men who struggled on for years, looking through muddied eyes for the coming of some semblance of a road, some blurred mirage of a school, some structure burlesquing the Tabernacles of God in'which to worship, looking for these and lookiug for them in vain, and finally selling his hard-won clearing to the aggregator with bitterness and hope contending for supremacy in his heart. Contrast his condition with that of the native landlords in some of our towns whom we have degraded from savages to gentlemen, in a short half-century, and say if the White Man is getting a square deal.