million dollars. As for the public works assets, however, it is difficult to reach an actual valuation, because these grow in value with increase in population and general development. Upon the latent water power which the State is to exploit, only a vague value can be put at this time. Ultimately water power, so abundant in New Zealand, should become a very valuable asset to the State.
Respecting State ownership, it is not so extensive as some persons imagine. The New Zealand Government is a great landlord, by far the greatest in the country, but not by many millions of acres does it own all the land. Its ownership is of such a magnitude, however, that, combined with constructive land laws, it has made private land monopoly impossible.
Neither does the State own all the coal mines, the forests, and public utilities. It has only three collieries, which produce less than twenty per cent of the Dominion's total coal output. The State holds immense areas of forest, but other vast sylvan domains are private freehold. It owns the railways,—excepting a few short private lines,—the telegraph lines, and, barring a few rural lines, the telephone systems; but water, gas, electric lighting and power, and street railway services are the properties of local bodies or private concerns.
Discounting exaggerated conceptions, no person, no institution in New Zealand is so busy, so versatile as that vague yet substantial entity, "The Government." Its hands are in many enterprises and benevolences, and
