NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1141, 31 May 1911, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY.

"We had hoped," said the President, Mit. J. G. Wilson, in his addross yesterday to the Wellington Provincial Conference of the Farmers' Union, "that this Parliament would settle once and for all the right of the leaseholder to convert his title to that of the freehold, but that will 1)0 again passed over, and it will remain for the next Parliament to pass such a measure." It is a little.surprising that in tho discussion, lator on, urjon . the "frco-

hold" resolution, nobody should have troubled to expand this point and show plainly why, after all these years, with the majority of the public behind it, the "freehold" policy is still baulked and evaded by the Government. There is nothing mysterious abcut the cause of this singular evasion of the popular will. The Government, of course, has no convictions of its own, as the Union is aware; but that will not prevent it from thwarting the "freehold" majority so long as any trust is placed in those professing "freehold" candidates who turn their backs on their pledges when the issue is squarely put in the House of Representatives. One of the speakers at yesterday's Conference said, very truly, that the Government will accommodate itself to the majority, and he added that the Government wants freeholders on its side. As a hint of policy, this, unless we misunderstand the speaker, is very unwise. No faith can be reposed in the Ministerialist "freeholder." There is the case of Mr. Smith, the member for Rangitikei, who definitely pledged himself in a circular to the electors to vote for the freehold regardless of consequences.- Yet he broke his pledge, as he will be sharply reminded next December. Then there is Mr. Field, the member for Otaki, who, after keeping his pledge and voting against the Government, apologised to Sir Joseph Ward for what he felt was his treachery. He never felt so mean in his life, he said. Now, the "freehold" cause can only suffer from dependence on men who feel this way when they stick to the pledges to which they owed their election. We are doubtful whether ths freehold policy can be forced on a Government which is ridden by the Radicals and which is barren of principles. The Union must go on fighting, but it should realise exactly what it has to fight.

The intolerant and oppressive spirit of trades unionism in this country was well illustrated in a case heard in the local Magistrate's Court yesterday. The Painters' Union proceeded against a Mr. Collins for a breach of the painters' and award, and claimed a penalty of£lo, There was no dispute about the facts. The Union secretary happened to be passing a job and saw a boy preparing to do some painting for Mr. Collins. There was a duly-qualified unionist who might have done the work, and the secretary accordingly instituted proceedings. The boy was a son of the defendant, and received no wages, but the Union claimed that as the father kept his son, he must be held to have recompensed him for his work. The case , was dismissed. AVe are pretty familiar with cases like these in New Zealand, so familiar that the bad and grotesque significance of them is hardly recognised. In any country outside Australia, nobody would believe that such a case actually came before a court of law. To English, American, and European eyes the report of the proceedings would appear to bo merely the invention of some satirist.

New. Zealand, as well as America, should be interested in a noteworthy article in the April Atlantic Monthly by Mr. M'Clellan, formerly Mayor of New York, on "The Tendency of Municipal Government." "It is no exaggeration," he declares, "to say that our urban population is composed entirely of State Socialists. There is not a city in the Union that has not joined in the procession towards collectivism." It is to this tendency far more than to corrupt officials, bossism and rotten politics that Mr. M'Clellan holds the increasing costof city government to be due. _ Taking the 158 cities whoso population exceeded 30,000 in 1908, Mr. M'Clellan found that every one maintained a free-school system and public parks of some kind. Nearly all maintained alms-houses and hospitals, and a great number charged themselves with public play-grounds, public baths, public gymnasinms, zoological gardens, municipally-man-aged river and ocean beaches and electric-light works. And the tendency is everywhere towards' extension. Mn. M'Clellan calculates that at the present rate of increase in municipal expenditure "the tax on city real estate must ultimately equal its rental value," taxation then becomes confiscation, and "the dearest wish of the pure Socialist has been realised." The only alternative, he thinks, is "a merciless retrenchment," and he adds: "Time alone can show whether we are on the eve of an individualistic reaction, or whether the present collectivistic tendency is" destined to grow stronger and more widespread, until it commits us to a policy . . . only possible of realisation through the repudiation of public debt and the confiscation of public property." People are apt to forget that a community must pay as a community for what it consumes and enjoys. If it chooses to enlarge its luxuries without correspondingly enlarging its surplus productiveness, somebody must be pinched. And in no way can the pinch be prevented from reaching first the poorer classes of the community.

The outbreak of bubonic plague at Auckland has been taken very qyictly by the public, which, . no doubt, is a very good thing. But it is not a matter, nevertheless, that should be treated with indifference. When the plague once gets into a place it has an unpleasant habit of recurring at intervals with consequences more or less serious to the community concerned. It is with some satisfaction, therefore, that we note the report of the City Engineer, published elsewhere, on the sanitary state of this city. Wellington, he states, is in a more satisfactory condition as to cleanliness than has ever been the case previously. Still, there are spots which do not come up to the standard, and these arc the danger spots. It is for the city authorities to see that these are promptly attended to. Mr. Morton, no doiibt, is right in urging that the best safeguard against trouble from the plague is regular and proper attention to the sanitary state of the city and the systematic destruction of rats; andthat spasmodic efforts at "scare" times are insufficient. So far as we are aware no attempt worth speaking of has been made to destroy the rats which swarm in certain parts of the city, and immediate steps might also bo taken in this direction with advantage.

The British Government has taken a very important and a very wise step in giving the visiting delegates from the Overseas Dominions a glimpse behind the scenes in regard to the foreign policy of Britain and also as to Imperial defence. Not only will this course of action be of •value from an educational jwint of view as affording aa insight into tho

intricate and delicate nature of the complicated issues involved in the conduct of foreign affairs; but this fresh evidence ot confidence between Britain and her colonies and the fuller recognition it indicates of the mutual 'and vital interests of the Homeland'and the Overseas Dominions should assist to a still closer understanding of the problems associated with the conduct of Imperial affairs, and a keener appreciation of the responsibilities resting on each and every part of the British Dominions to assist in ensuring the smooth running of the vast machinery of Empire. How infinitely more important and far-reaching in its influence as a means of strengthening those "bonds of Empire" about which we hear so much useless claptrap talked is such a step as that now quietly and soberly taken by the British Government, compared with the fanciful and impracticable idea put forward by Sir Joseph Ward to the accompaniment of a mass of unconvincing and irrelevant verbiage and well-meant, but unnecessary reiteration of professions of loyalty which must be growing a little wearisome from their so frequent