CONFERENCE ON FRUIT GROWING. 



49 



occupiers ; this was recommended by the Royal Commission on Local 

 Taxation of 1882. The effect would be to widen the burden of the 

 payment, give landowners greater interest that the rate should not be 

 exorbitant, and give some one besides the farmer the opportunity to 

 complain. 



4. As at present Motor cars pay nothing towards the roads or local 

 rates, it has been suggested by Mr. Lloyd Wharton in the House of 

 Commons that they should be rated on a graduated scale. It was proposed 

 at the Central Chamber of Agriculture that motors up to 10-horse power 

 should be rated at £1 per horse power, and that for every horse power 

 over ten the rate should be doubled. This payment would be some slight 

 compensation for the wear of the road, the frightening of horses, making 

 them shy and endangering the lives of the occupants of carriages (both 

 public and private), their special danger to children and old and deaf 

 people, their inconvenience to other travellers on the road in the way of 

 dust and smell, besides smothering houses and hedges near the road with 

 dust, and the fact that they often selfishly monopolise the road, driving 

 people into the banks at the road side for safety. It is unfair that rate- 

 payers in agricultural districts should have to pay for the pleasures of 

 the community at large. 



I also agree with the suggestions on rating of the Board of Agriculture 

 Fruit Growers' Commission 1905, viz. : 



I. That in the assessing of agricultural holdings for local rates, the 

 assessment should not be raised by reason of the planting of fruit for a 

 period of five years after the planting in the case of small fruit, or seven 

 in the case of mixed plantations, and twelve years in the case of orchards, 

 also the two recommendations in reference to income tax. 



II. That the benefits of the Agricultural Rates Act of 1896 be 

 extended to glasshouses used for commercial purposes. 



III. That, in the case of glasshouses, the allowance of one-sixth, 

 given to dwelling-houses for repairs in the assessment for income tax, be 

 increased to one- third, by making a special allowance of one-sixth for 

 renewal, in addition to one-sixth for repairs. 



IV. That rule No. 8 for the assessment of income tax, whereby 

 market gardens and nurseries are assessed for Schedule B according to 

 the rules of Schedule D, be repealed so far as it applies to market 

 gardens. 



In conclusion, although farmers are said to be proverbial grumblers, 

 I trust I have proved that hardships which should be remedied do exist 

 both in land tenure and in the rating of land, as well in many other 

 ways. 



Unless agriculture is prosperous, capitalists will invest little, and that 

 only sparingly, and the son of the farmer is apt either to emigrate (and 

 farm in competition), or go into business or profession in town. The 

 agricultural labourer has very little chance of bettering himself, and at 

 twenty-five years old probably earns as much as at any time in his life ; 

 very, very few are ever able to take a little farm, as is the ambition of 

 almost every farm labourer in Canada. 



It is a most serious thing, directly and indirectly, for the agriculture of 

 the country not to be prosperous. It is for the good of the nation itself 



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