The Dominion TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1925. THE CONTEST IN FRANKLIN

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 219, 16 June 1925, Page 8

The Dominion TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1925. THE CONTEST IN FRANKLIN

On a number of grounds, the result of the by-election which is to take place in the Franklin electorate to-morrow will be awaited with keen expectancy in all parts of the Dominion. Great importance naturally attaches to the first appeal made to the people since the Government was reconstituted under the leadership of Mr. Coates, and the more so since the appeal is made in the constituency long represented by the great Prime Minister who so recently passed away. 1 • The by-election derives additional interest and significance from the fact that it has developed as a straight-out contest between the Reform Part}’ and extreme Labour. No Parliamentary constituency ever was a safer stronghold than Franklin was in Mr. Massey’s day. The late Prime Minister represented Franklin in nine successive Parliaments, and more especially in his later career was able to rely almost solely, so far as his own constituency was concerned, upon the sentiments of loyal devotion with which’ he was regarded by an overwhelming proportion of the Franklin electors. An electoral majority based to this extent upon personal associations is not easily maintained intact or unimpaired when these associations are broken. Looking at matters only from this standpoint, it seems not at all unlikely that the Reform majority in Franklin may be reduced. It is also a factor of some importance that the Labour-Socialist candidate is a farmer and personally popular in the district. The danger, however, of assisting to increase even in a limited degree the strength and influence of a party committed to a policy of socialisation certainly should be clearly apparent to the people of a predominantly farming community such as the Franklin electorate comprehends. In conducting his campaign, the Reform candidate (Mr. McLennan) wisely has laid full emphasis on the land policy to which the extreme Labour Party, and his opponent (Mr. Montgomerie), as a member of that party, are pledged. Under this policy it is proposed that land should be saleable only to the State, at a State valuation, and that the State should have power at its discretion to pay for land in “national bonds bearing interest.” • It is particularly obvious that these proposals are not only unjust, but would amount in practice to a gigantic system of confiscation of which the worst effects would fall on small holders who by industry and enterprise effect improvements of the kind for which adequate compensation is never obtained under an official valuation. At the same time the bonds the Labour Party proposes to issue in payment for land would inevitably depreciate if they were issued on more than; a very limited scale. 2 The extreme Labour land policy is a combination of confiscation* and wild-cat finance which undoubtedly would stifle the farming industry on which the Dominion vitally depends. That a farmer of standing and experience like Mr. Montgomerie should have consented to accept responsibility for such a policy, and for other proposals of a similar kind which bear it company in the extreme Labour platform, is simply extraordinary. In its farming population, the Dominion has its strongest bulwark against the introduction of rash Socialistic experiments, and if any considerable amount of support.were given in a farming community to the ruinous policy championed by Mr. Montgomerie, the risk of a serious extension of the power and influence of the extreme Labour Party throughout the Dominion manifestly would be greatly increased. The electors of Franklin clearly have an opportunity, in safeguarding their own interests as members of a farming community, 'of assisting to safeguard national interests. They will achieve both ends by rejecting decisively the unjust and destructive policy of the extreme Labour Party.