EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 166, 16 July 1931, Page 23

EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE.

In time 3 of stress the powers that be cast about to find a scapegoat to carry the national sins, and without fail the manual labourer jumps to sight. "He id far too well off. What have leisure or culture to do with the common herd? Forsooth, away with such nonsense"; and so the undistinguishing and deathful storm of economy beats heavily upon the exposed worker. Interest and rates are computed on a false basis, the ficticious land values ruling throughout New Zealand. If Governments or private individuals pay far more for land than it is worth, is it a fail" deal that the entire population be asked to shoulder the burden ? There is not a rood of land that is not over-valued, both urban and rural, as the result of a wild orgy of speculation. The farmer who is saddled with one of these high-priced places has need of the philosopher's stone, for nothing he could grow, or carry on hoof or heel, would pay the interest, without mention of capital. The 10 per cent cut may not be the most palatable remedy, but in common fairness it should be applied from the top to the bottom, else it is but a repetition of the age-old iniquity of "taking away even that he hath." Again, one would have expected the local bodies to have given a lead in employment, for in the prosperous years they spent the ratepayers' money like water; loan after loan was raised and got through in record time, till the aggregate indebtedness has reached truly staggering figures. Now, when the lean kine have devoured the fat kine, they look through the lists and dismiss a few of the lower-paid workers, as though a few labourers' wages were either here or there .in the welter of piled-up debts. There is complaining in our streets, and little children go hungry to school in this land of ours,-while there are millions of pounds on fixed deposit in all our banks. Surely there is something radically wrong when these things are possible in a young country where the wealth per capita is what it is. Granted that we have lived beyond our means, the sole blame does not rest entirely on the class that do the useful, and ofttimes dirty work of the world; hundreds of workers entered into commitments in the years of fair promise, in all good faith, which the reduction in wages will render them unable to fulfil, unless interest and rates and the cost of living show a corresponding fall. Lees government and more self-reliance is one of the needs of our time, and the workers of New Zealand need to arouse themselves from their electoral apathy and see where the policy of drift leads to. If we only took half the interest in our country's welfare that we give to our national industry, racing, or to football, New Zealand would be the pattern State, the modern Utopia. WORKER.