TRENCHANT CRITICISM.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 115, 17 May 1897, Page 6

TRENCHANT CRITICISM.

THE PRIVATE BENEFIT SOCIETY COMMISSIONERS. The appointment of Major Steward and Messrs. Fisher aud Tregear as a lloyal Commission to investigate the affairs of private benefit societies calls forth a trenchant article from the Otago -Daily Times. It characterises the whole thing as " a ridiculous and contemptible farce," and declares that the Commission has been devised to reward a pair of Government supporters. Incidentally that journal is rather hard on Mr. Tregear, whom it dubs '"an amiable person with a taste for literature, coupled, if we may judge by the selections he makes for publication in the Journal of the DaprrUucnt oil Labour, v with a predilection for incendiarism. Through the Journal he snorts defiance at capitalists and capital with a vigour that in so mild a person is truly astonishing. Yet we do not suppose ho would touch a sans-culotte with a pair of tongs. His Phrygian cap is made of silk and his arsenal filled with verbal weapons only." Major Steward's position on the Commission, the paper asserts, proves that he is able to lick the hand that smites him. "J)ethroned from the Speakership, thrust aside whon a more sturdy beggar claimed the Chairmanship of Committees, he is yet content to blink in the sunshine of Ministerial lavour and thankfully accept the crumbs that fall from the table." As for the third, Mr. George Fisher, he is set down as no humblo suppliant, but rather a lusty scorner, who has obtruded himself upon the Government, and while bullying them into granting him favours inwardly laughs at the fears his hectoring excites. Kicked with ignominy out of the Atkinson Ministry for disloyalty, he became a political pariah, distrusted by both sides, and repaying scorn w ith snarls. Then he gained the ear of the mob in Wellington, and the Seddon Ministry was forced to take him up. even though he had denounced them as sham Liberals tainted with corruption. His support of the Government is conditional. lie resembles one of those mercenary captains so numerous in the Continental wars, who were ready to sell their services to the highest bidder, and equally ' prompt to transfer themselves and their ragged followers to the other side for higher pa}-, and with the same earnestness endeavour .to cut the throats of their former Employers. " That the appointment of the Commission is a contemptible job" the Otago Times endeavours to show by the assertion that there are only two private benefit societies of any importance in the colony — the Union Company's society and that of the Colonial Sugar Company in Auckland. The former has been fiercely criticised, and has come out of its ordeal creditably. " The company has intimated its intention of doing at the end of September that which it has all along expressed its intention to doretire from all participation in the management as soon as the society could go alone, and make it then a purely voluntary association like any other friendly society, but on a far stronger foundation because of the liberality with which the company has subscribed to its funds. Before the report of the Commission can have fceen the iiyht there will bo nothing to report about, *lor the society will have ceased to be a private one in the seme that it is partially maintained by the employers." As for the Colonial Sugar Company's society, the pretext for investigation is equally thin. " There will be no conditions to enquire into very soon because beet sugar is driving the colonial article out of the market." Therefore the industry must die, or be reduced to small limits, and. in either case the Commission will find itself very much de trop. The suggestion that the Commission should include the management of friendly societies in the scope of its enquiries is not at all countenanced by the Otago Times. " There are intricate financial problems to be solved, a number of novel conditions to be taken into account, actuarial tables to Le compiled ; and with all this, extreme care must be taken to utilise the great mass of fraternal enthusiasm that keeps the societies together. To let Messrs. Fisher & Co. loose among this tangled web would be to invite disaster. . - To entrust an enquiry so wide and yet so delicate to a Commission of political partisans assisted by an oflicial would be not only to court lailure, but to go a long way in the direction of wrecking the friendly society system altogether."