CLASS LEGISLATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 249, 21 October 1933, Page 8

CLASS LEGISLATION.

Can you or any of your readers explain why Ministers consider themselves and their fellow farmers'are so lacking in intelligence ' as to require legislative protection preventing their being canvassed for shares? The proposed new Companies Bill .permits a business man to be convassed for shares in his office. Is that because our farmer Prime Minister and his former colleagues in the Cabinet 'have some grievance they wish to work off against th e city man—or belonging as they do to the farming community, admit that maybe the farmer is a person of lower intelligence and therefore must not be canvassed? It is convenient, of course, to copy the English section relative to - share hawking, but then is England governed by farmers or business men? If the brain and intelligence of the New Zealand farmer is considered by our politicians to be equal to that of his city brother possessed ol an "office" within the meaning of the proposed new Act —by what process of reasoning is one class in the community to be granted a < monopoly of backing new flotations at the expense of the other? The biggest' industry In this Dominion is farming. Without the farmer this country would have been bankrupt long" ago. It is surely a poor tribute to the intelligence of the man on the land to legislate against him upon the ground that unless he has a sharebroker to think for him he is unfit to decide for himself where and how he shall invest his savings. I suppose the greater proportion, of our M.P.'s are farmers —considered fit to govern this Dominion —yet this group of Coalition politician* solemnly advise the country that the class .from which they have sprung—the class representing nearly half the people of this Dominion and producers of 90 per cent of our exports must not make any investment except through a licensed sharebroker, and because they maKC their livelihood in the country instead of m the town they must not be canvassed shares —that they need protection on accoun of their ignorance. Can you beat it? COMMON SENSE.