CHAPTER XXVI
“SOCIAL PESTS”
WHILE other countries have talked about land reform or their peasants have staged revolutions to get farms of their own, New Zealand has quietly gone ahead and put through a system of land ownership and taxation which in the United States would be called socialistic.
What would our people say, for example, if Congress should pass laws carrying out a land policy such as was explained to me by one of the national leaders of New Zealand? He said:
“We do not look upon land as like other property. Land should belong to the state. It is given to it by the Lord, to be held in trust for the people. It is all right for a man to own the improvements he makes and to be allowed to sell them or leave them to his descendants; but as to the land itself I don’t think God ever intended any one man to own vast tracts and be able to hand on the property to his descendants through generation after generation.
“As the trustee of the people the government has no more right to sell large tracts of land than it has to give them away. The ideal method would be for the government to own all the land and lease it, and that is what we some day hope to accomplish here. As it is now, I think we have blasted the ambitions of those who dreamed of building up great estates as family inheritances.”
New Zealand has abundant water power, much of which is still undeveloped. The government has selected seventy-odd sites for hydro-electric projects and has a big programme under way.
The big land problem was getting the immense sheep blocks held by a few cut up into smaller areas for general farming. The government has the right to condemn land for closer settlement.
New Zealand has experienced some terrible volcanic eruptions. In one the top of Mt. Tarawera was blown off, with an explosion heard five hundred miles away, and surrounding villages were buried sixty feet deep in mud.
It does not seem likely that the government will ever own all the land in New Zealand, but it holds enough to control the situation, and it stands ready to take more whenever it thinks it necessary. What the people are after is to make their country one of small farms, and they are opposed to large holdings by any person or corporation. They call the big landowner a “social pest,” and have not hesitated to strip him of a part, at least, of his possessions. Lands taken from the big proprietors have been cut up and sold to settlers, whom the government helps and encourages quite as much as it discourages the owners of vast tracts.
Indeed, the lot of the large landowner in New Zealand is not a happy one. His lands are at the mercy of the government, which can force him to sell at any time. The more land he owns, the higher his tax rate. If he does not live in New Zealand, his taxes are automatically increased by fifty per cent.
The development of land policies aimed at the larger owners is comparatively recent, and entirely contrary to the theories of the men who established the first colonies here. The story of how the system came to be changed, as I have learned it in talking with some of the highest officials in the Dominion, is most interesting. It all goes back to the very beginnings of the country.
Before the year 1840 considerable effort had been made to induce the British government to colonize the islands of New Zealand. But the imperial authorities were always busy with other things and, besides, they pointed to Australia, a whole continent with plenty of room for British settlers. The leaders of the colonization movement replied that Australia was for many reasons unsuited to their purposes. They wanted to establish a colony of British farmers with ideals and conditions like those of old England. The climate of Australia, they said, was unfavourable to this scheme, there was little place for English farming methods there, and finally, they thought the convicts sent to Australia made it an undesirable country for their plans.
At last they organized a colonizing corporation called the New Zealand Company. The plan was to set up landlords in the new country, with tenant farmers to work their estates. Members of old British county families with sufficient capital were invited to join and they, in turn, induced sons of the family tenants to go out with them. A system of grazing “runs,” as they were called, soon sprang up and were found to pay well, for large numbers of sheep and cattle could be pastured on the grass lands all the year round at small expense. Much of the land was bought at very low prices by men who never went to New Zealand. One man, for instance, paid two dollars and a half an acre for fifty thousand acres now worth one hundred dollars an acre. Others purchased tracts of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or even two hundred thousand acres.
For the most part these great holdings lay idle, while their absentee owners waited for the land to increase in value. Sometimes they used their vast acreage for grazing sheep, having perhaps a dozen shepherds on a principality that should have supported several thousand farmers. There was a sort of craze for big farms, and individuals and groups took up all the lands they could get. The unfederated states of the New Zealand of that day had no common policies, and sold off their lands indiscriminately to any who would buy them, in order to raise money to build railroads or meet other expenses.
Often lands were held by English syndicates, whose managers squeezed the tenants in every possible way to increase dividends. It was stated in the New Zealand Parliament that the manager of one of these absentee land companies had made a speech to his directors in London, apologizing because he could declare a dividend and bonus of only fifteen per cent. at that time, and saying that the shareholders must not look for bigger profits until wages in New Zealand were reduced. The tenants were charged such high rents that there was no money in farming. The small holdings were mortgaged so that the farm owner paid as much interest as the tenants did rent, and most of the money from both was going to England.
Feeble efforts to tax the big farms out of existence did not prove successful. The landholders could pay high taxes and still make fine profits on their huge sheep and cattle pastures. They held tight to their acres, New Zealand lost favour with intending settlers, and even those who had come in began to sell out and leave the country, moving across to New South Wales and Victoria.
Such were the conditions that faced New Zealand’s greatest premier, Richard Seddon, or “King Dick,” when he came into power. Richard Seddon was a man of the people. Born in England, the son of a Lancashire farmer, he learned the trade of an engineer, and when, as a boy, he first came to Australia, he worked in the railroad shops. Later he went to the goldfields at Bendigo, and there swung a pick in the mines. Throughout the rest of his life some of his friends called him “Digger Dick.” After three years he came to New Zealand to try his luck in the goldfields of the west coast. It was there he first engaged in politics. He was elected mayor of his town and in 1879 was sent to the New Zealand Parliament, in which he held a seat until his death twenty-seven years later. For thirteen years of that time he was leader of Parliament, and therefore the prime minister of the country.
Seddon was a great, deep-chested, hearty sort of a man, with a jovial manner, a jolly laugh, an amazing memory for faces, and a gift for handling people, especially those of the class from which he came. He had tremendous force and driving power, and while he was in office he put through a great many laws in the interest of the working man.
One of the first big questions he tackled was the land problem, which he felt was responsible for the hard times from which New Zealand was then suffering. His solution was a new land law, which provided chiefly that the government should have the right to buy any lands in the Dominion for the purpose of re-dividing them for sale to settlers. In case an owner refused to sell, or held out for an exorbitant price, the government could condemn the lands and take them over at a fair price. Under this law, which is still in force, the Minister of Lands may at any time notify a proprietor in writing that his land or a portion thereof is required for purposes of settlement. Within six months the owner must tell the Minister whether he will enter into an agreement with the government for its subdivision and disposal, or whether it shall be taken compulsorily under the Land for Settlements Act.
The government conducts four big experiment farms and in the laboratories at Wellington tests seeds and fertilizers for the farmers. This is a crop of rust-resisting oats on a government farm.
Believing that the future of the country depends chiefly on agriculture, the New Zealand government offers every inducement to settlers to take up unimproved land and clear it for cultivation.
In talking with officials as to just how this law worked, I asked them to give me a typical case. Here is the story of what happened when the government took over the bulk of an estate of more than eighty thousand acres. The tract belonged to a man who had bought a large part of it more than half a century before, paying about one dollar an acre. Much of it was rich farm land, but it was being used mostly for sheep raising. For tax purposes, the land had been valued at a million and a half, which the owner claimed was two hundred thousand dollars too high. When the authorities wanted to buy his land for settlers, he refused to sell an acre, and the government thereupon took possession.
The question of the value of the property was referred to the Court of Assessment. The owner was finally allowed to retain the homestead and a reasonable amount of the land adjoining, and the government was empowered to take the rest, paying the owner the amount of the assessed valuation. The land officials then resurveyed the estate and divided it into farms of three hundred and twenty acres or less. They laid out a town site and three village sites and built a railroad across the property. They spent about three hundred thousand dollars in developing the tract before opening it up to settlers.
The lands were rapidly taken on the usual government terms, and at the end of six years, instead of being a big sheep run, the estate was made up of productive small farms. Land formerly used for grazing was yielding forty-five bushels of wheat to the acre and there were eleven thousand acres of it in English grass. Under intensive cultivation more wool and mutton were being shipped from the estate than when it was all devoted to sheep. In the neighbourhood of fifty thousand sheep and lambs were exported from it annually. When the government took that estate the employees upon it numbered something like a score. Under the new arrangement the same area supported more than twelve hundred people and was spotted with pretty farm homes and school houses.
Within twenty years after Seddon came into power the number of farms in New Zealand had doubled and the population had grown from six hundred and thirty-four thousand to more than a million. As Seddon once said, “land formerly used to raise only sheep was turned to raising men.”
Though the government had arbitrary power to take almost any lands it wanted, the number of forced sales was not very large. The presence of the law on the statute books and the realization that the government meant business resulted in offers of great tracts of land for sale. Almost every year nearly twice as much land was offered to the government as it was prepared to buy, and it was thus able to pick and choose such lands as were best suited by location and quality for settlement. Usually, also, there were more applicants for land than there were farms available for sale, so that the government was in position to award the lands to those who seemed most likely to make successful farmers.
Under the present laws an applicant may take up land with the right to purchase on a renewable lease. He must be at least seventeen years of age, and must want the land solely for his own use. Including the land for which he makes application, he must not own anywhere in New Zealand more than five thousand acres. For allotment purposes, every acre of first-class land is counted as seven and a half acres; every acre of second-class land as two and a half acres, and every acre of third-class land as one acre. No applicant is allotted more land than the officials think he can properly care for, and all prospective settlers must pass an examination as to their qualifications. Veterans of the World War are allowed to acquire land on especially easy terms, and more than eight thousand former New Zealand soldiers took up farms within five years after the troops returned home.
The government still has about 4,500,000 acres of which about 400,000 acres are suitable for settlers. Most of the remainder is rough land, not available for farming. About 150,000 acres are disposed of each year, and the land department reports a profit of more than $250,000 a year on its operations. It has loaned more than $100,000,000 to 50,000 settlers, and about half of this sum has been paid back. In the meantime, the area under active cultivation has enormously increased. Out of a total of 48,000,000 acres in New Zealand suitable for farms and pasturage all but 5,000,000 acres are now occupied, and more than 17,000,000 acres have been seeded, either with crops or for pasture.