Page:The empire and the century.djvu/511

 The farmers are the most influential class. This is but natural in a country where there are no less than 48,000 freeholders, each occupying more than 5 acres of land, to say nothing of many thousands State tenants. Only one-tenth of the occupied soil is held by the tenants of private owners, so that rural landlordism has not yet made much headway. The farmers, therefore, are their own masters, especially in these latter years in which State mortgage loans on easy terms, together with prosperous seasons, have loosened the once tight grip of money-lenders and financial institutions. The policy by which the New Zealanders endeavour to promote the subdivision of their soil has come in for some criticism among Utopians as well as Conservatives. Conservatives see the premature extinction of a class of wealthy country gentlemen whose homes might be a refining influence. The scientific Utopian fears that the multiplication of small holdings must people the country with a race of ignorant, inefficient, thick-headed peasants without machinery, capital, or initiative. But the New Zealand farmer is by no means a boor. He is educated, keen-witted, handy. Where capital and expensive machinery are wanted he and his neighbours will use cooperation, as in the case of dairy factories. Moreover, the Government Department of Agriculture is the farmers' friend—a powerful educating and stimulating force.

Next to the farmers in influence come the work-people. These, as a class, let the trade unions speak for them in politics, though most of them are not enrolled in unions. Many, though by no means all, of the manual workers, are keen politicians, and the class has more voice in practical politics than their fellows in North America or Europe. This is the more noteworthy because no specific Labour party exists, and no workman has ever held office in any Ministry. All adult women may, and most of them do, exercise the franchise. But there is no feminine party. Social position and industrial interests are the chief