THE OUTLOOK.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 895, 15 August 1910, Page 10

THE OUTLOOK.

CAUSES OF WANT OF CONFIDENCE. AGITATIONS AND UNCEETAINTY. An interesting speech was mado by the Hon. Thomas Fergus at the annual meeting of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce. Tho president (Mr. Fergus said) , had : been perfectly right when ho had indicated that we were entering on a period of prosperity at the present time, because our commodities wero commanding very largo prices. In almost every department there had been a growth in tho value of our commodities, and the Dominion had benefited generally by increased prices. He would like to see a confidence prevailing in proportion. There had been a time when no one would have thought that the cry of tho unemployed would ho heard in the land. He believed thero had been too much legislation, too much, tinkering, too-' much crying out for tho moon.

Thoy would always find ono question looming largtr-the litud- question. It was always cropping up. There was not a lumper.on the wharf or a.tinker on tlio streets who was not an authority on the land question. But it was not a.question tor everyone ; it was a question lor specialists.' Let those who were keeping tho land be given peace in their time, and let them also repose some- confidence in that body of men who were the backbone of Now Zealand. He knew, as a matter of fact that farmers, graziers, the small men, more especially the smaller men, worked seven days in' the "week all the year round, and that it took them all their time to make two-.ends meet; and to put by for a rainy day. 'It 6eem'ed to him that the time ot thrift had departed in New Zealand. They wore going to. help everybody—the drunkard and the ■' improvident—at the expensb of. the man who had been provident in' his time: "For Heaven's sake,": Mr. Fergus'went on to say,.'"let.us stop! this wholesale agitation about the land. It belongs to the people, and so belongs to me, and if a man -has brought up a small family after his years' struggle on the land, is he in tho sear and yellow leaf of life to be turned out to make room for a faddist?" What, he would ask them, had been the cause of the trouble in. the old lands? It was the freehold of the land they wanted. There had been a continual tinkering by Labour legislation. No sooner was one agitation concluded than another cropped up. Disputations were multiplying each other again : and again, and, they, could not-take up a paper; published between Auckland and the Bluff without reading about some new ..pettifogging industrial dispute. The great majority of men just nodded their heads and quietly acquiesced in what was'going, on. . ■■ >i. • '.:.•.; There'was not the same confidence in tho country now' as there was : a few years ago. People were not undertaking tho improvement of their properties in the manner that they used to do. They preferred now to wait and see what tho nest move was to be. No man would make improvement if lur suspected that within tho next year or two there would be'demands made upon him that would ruin his enterprise. The.result was that, while there was plenty of .money ready for investment, . ■ - the owners very carefully sought that the object: to. which that' money was devoted afforded them "ample security. ' ; ' :.