The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1938. TO THE FLATTERED PEOPLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1938. TO THE FLATTERED PEOPLE.

For the cause that lack* assistance, For the urong that needs resistance, For th« future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

Hundreds of political speakers during the coining weeks will make their various appeals to men and women throughout the length and breadth of the land. On every night nt tlie week, until rlie eve of polling day, the principal radio stations will

transmit the booming voices of lenders and

leading member's of parties, all making absolute assertions of their own and their parties' wirdoni and the foolishness or the danger to the country of their opponents. They will extol their colleagues' virtue and ability, and throw doubt and scorn upon the political rectitude and capacity of all who bear another party label. They will Hatter the elector, who at" this time is told—what only he himself knew before —that lie is the embodiment of common sen-e, u shrewd fellow not, to be taken in by specious promises or by flattery, and, above all, a patriot who puts his country first. His country, he lenrns, is one of " amazing resources," which have not yet been " tapped,'' or " only the surface of them has been scratched." If only he will vot-e for one party it will do the rest, for it alone knows how to " develop" these resources, and it nlono has so much of the milk of human kindness that it can be trusted to " govern for all the people." To a new elector these assertions may be confusing at first, but soon, being (is he not sure of it now!) "the intelligent elector," he may begin to think, to discriminate, to ask himself: What is true and what is false?

First, about tho country's "amazing resources." They are not amazing in tho sense that they are unique. It is not true that they have been " hardly scratched." It is not true that a Government, by passing legislation, can " develop" resources so that the country and its people will enjoy undreamed-of prosperity. But —the elector is incessantly told, by the Government party—" the problem of production has been solved; what is needed is a fairer distribution." It is not true, except in a narrow sense, that the problem of production has been " solved." The Dominion's wealth is not derived from production, but from production profitably marketed, and the question of whether the marketing will be profitable is not within the power of any New Zealand Government to determine. If it cannot be profitably marketed, then it will be futile to talk of "fairer distribution," and of " seeing that the people have the purchasing power to buy their own production." It is too easy to assume that because the greater part of New Zealand's production has for many years been marketed profitably, that will always be the case. But tho margin between profitable and unprofitable production is not wide, even in good years, and it has become narrowed. It has been narrowed by the increasing of costs in New Zealand. When a Government deliberately enacts legislation which will result in further increasing costs, and when it promises more and more of such legislation, it is time for the people to think hard about fundamentals.

But the greatest fallacy paraded before the electors is that because a party bears the name of " Labour w it has a better knowledge of the needs of the Dominion, and is better equipped for government than any other. The obvious answer is that New Zealand has grown up without' the help of a Labour Government, and that if the Labour party should be annihilated on October 15 the conditions of life of only a few people would be affected. No Government can influence the conditions of prosperity nearly as much as it would have the people believe. But a Government obsessed with the idea that by imposing its own ideas upon the people it can make New Zealand in some way unique can do great harm while its ideas are being tested. New Zealanders have no wish to be subjects of experiment in a political laboratory.