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.