Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

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.