The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning. Saturday, October 31,1891. HISH! THE BOGEY!

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 679, 31 October 1891, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning.

Saturday, October 31,1891. HISH! THE BOGEY!

Be juet and tear not} Let all the ends thoti ataa’et at be thy country’s. Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Ths giant Capital has some mysterious and effective ways of making his power felt. He lies very low at times, but directly, a few sixpences are subtracted from the wealth of the Moneybags for State purposes, there is at at once a fear of grim desolation in all the surroundings, and the world, or that particular portion of it which dares to claim the few odd sixpences, is going to smash without allowing decent time for united supplications for mercy at the hands of the god Mammon. New Zealand was going to smash right off only a few months ago. The Government had the impudence to propose to ease the burdens of the struggling farmer who improves his land, and so adjust the incidence of taxation as to make it bear fairly all round. The capitalist threatened to withdraw his money without further delay—probably to invest it in some such “security" as Chilian or Argentine bonds, or give Guatemala or some of the other swashbuckling little communities the funds to work off a few more fiery revolutions, But the echo of the threats died away gradually, and there was soon a beautiful peace, only ruffled occasionally by the exodus of men who left room for other workmen to fill their places when the former found that they could earn better wages in other colonies.

Now, another bolt has come from the blue, and sombre-looking headlines to a body of big type, give the woful in. telligence that an investment company in the North of New Zealand is withdrawing its investments to the extent of A quarter of a million : others are preparing to do likewise, and all refuse w

increase their investments while the attacks on capital continue to be made in the colony. There is a significance about the way this cable message has been made to do duty. Just now the Labor party in New South Wales is effectively acting the role of king of the political see-saw—they have let Parkes dangle his legs in the air as penance for his innumerable inconsistencies, and they have given Dibbs a temporary lease of power so long as he does not try to shuffle from the principles to which the Labor party has got him nailed. The peculiar phase of the bogey cable message is that it was first sent to Sydney, and simultaneously with its appearance in New Zealand we have also the comments of the Conservative organ, the Sydney Morning Herald. The dodge is a transparent one in New Zealand, but may not be so in New South Wales, where it will probably serve to frighten all the timid people who have shown a disposition to favor the side that is fighting for principle. Possibly the company to which allusion is made is the famous Globo Estates Company, which has, among other things, been disposing of the estate of the defunct Native Land Settlement Company. Supposing the sales this week represented £lOO,OOO the quarter of a million could soon be totalled up by a little exaggeration on the part of the cable agent, who retails some queer stories at times. Or the quarter million could easily be made up concerning other investors who found their calculations on some such basis as the Sydney financial bubbles that have recently burst, and which, though showing magnificent reserves, could never discover them in the hour of need. Some of them represented as good security “suburban” sections which the enterprising goat could scarcely clamber over without being open to the imputation that it had no visible means of support. To depart a little from banter, we say plainly that we believe that this message about the withdrawal of capital to be merely bluff to dupe those who cannot see through the transparent dodge. If it is the Globo Estates Company that is referred to, then for the future prosperity of New Zealand, we hope that it will hurry on the withdrawal of its “ capital invested ” while that means the throwing open of the land for profitable occupation by the people. Any company or individual that keeps land locked up for speculative purposes is about as much use to the country as the rabbit is to the Southern sheepfarmer. Country land is worth no more than can be got out of the land itself, and sad experience has proved that it is only by taxation which exempts improvements that the individual who wants to buy land to make it reproductive, and not for mere speculative purposes, could get a chance—by the State discontinuing the tax on industry and applying a lever to move the moneyed man who holds land merely in the hope of a rise. There is no disguising that that is what was done by the Globo Estates Company, and if it is to this company that the unscrupulous wirepullers allude ; then they had better hold their tongue, for the humbug about the withdrawal of investments will be exposed in Sj’dney very soon. It may be added, by the way, that all the land sold by the Company was sold on terms that prevent the immediate withdrawal of any great amount of capital.