Reis

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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the growing costs of wool production must give rise to some anxiety. The problem presented by them is, how- ever, only a part, though a very im- portant part, of the general problem of high costs of production which we have discussed in our main report (Part II hereof). 5. We are primarily concerned here with the question of certain measures which might be taken to improve the position of the industry in the matter of security of land tenure and of the size of the area which one individual partnership or company is allowed to acquire. Our impressions have been gathered mainly in Queensland, but we think that what is true of that State in regard to the pastoral in- dustry is true generally mutatis mutandis elsewhere. ] 6. In respect of both the points to which we have referred, matters have been greatly improved in Queensland from the point of view of the wool grower within the last two years, as the result of the report from which we have quoted and of the subsequent action of the Land Administration Board. Previous Queensland Govern- ments seem to have set themselves to oreak up the large pastoral estates and almost to have exposed themselves to the charge of adopting a hostile attitude towards them. To-day things are better, since a man can get, in the remoter districts, a pastoral lease for 40 years, with a liability to the re- appraisement of the unimproved value of his land, and consequently to an increase of rent, at the end of the twentieth year, and can apply at the end of the thirtieth vear for a re- newal of his lease so that he may know ten years before his lease comes to an end whether he will be allowed to con- tinue to rent his holding or a part of it, and, if so, what part and at what rent, on the expiry of his current lease. Similarly with grazing leases: in the less remote areas a man can get a 28 years’ lease liable to reappraise- ment every seven years and, if he likes, apply for renewal at the end of the twenty-first year; but the Govern- ment seems to be deeply wedded to the principle of terminable leases at rents which are admittedly low, and to be averse from freehold. The idea of sapturing ‘‘ unearned increment ’’ for the State is much in its mind. 7. It seems to us that, from the ooint of view of security of tenure, and consequently of the encourage- ment of capital for investment in the development of lands which, at pre- sent, and for as far in the future as it is worth while to look, are only suit- ible for cattle or sheep raising on an sxtensive scale, there is much to be said for giving a tenant the option to sonvert his lease into a freehold after, say, ten years from the commencement >f his lease, conditionally on his raving carried out stocking and other mprovements to the satisfaction of she Government, at a price fixed at the commencement of his lease. The orice should be fixed on the fair profit- sarning capacity of the land over a erm of average years given reasonably Afcient management. This, after all, 5s all that the Government has got to sell. It ought not to expect more, ind is not likely in the long run to be ible to get more. 8. Instances came under our notice »f the drawbacks to the present system >f terminable leaseholds. We were :old of lessees of large areas who, luring the last years of their leases, efrained from making the improve- nents necessary to enable full economic 1se to be made of the land, and for which they had ample capital, because »f their uncertainty as to what their yosition would be at the end of their ease. We have heard on good wuthority that there have even been 2 good many cases of people on whose and prickly pear was spreading during the last few years of a lease not troubling to deal with it. It was not worth their while as their leases were coming to an end. 9. It would, of course, be a corollary sf the acceptance of the principle of ‘reehold that taxation applying to freehold land only, and not to lease- 10ld, should be abandoned; or, if it was thought necessary specially to tax and at all as against any other form of property, that the burden of taxa- tion should be distributed equitably as petween freehold and leasehold. If here is some insuperable objection to

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