THE GENERAL ELECTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 119, 15 November 1902, Page 2

THE GENERAL ELECTION.

DR. FINDLAY'S SECOND ADDRESS. FURTHER DEFENCE OF THE GOV- ! ERNMENT. ! The Skating Rink was filled least evening on. the occ?S;ion of the second address of Dr. Findlay. Mr.' T. K. Macdonald presided, and in introducing the candidate wid lie had had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Findlay's opening addie>s in the Choral Hall, and ho Arould be paidoned for saying that it was the finest political address he had heard in Wellington for many years. (Apj>lause.) It vras gratifying to him, who had stuck fast by the Liberal party for thirty years, to note the entry into the arena of so strong a man as Dr. Findlay. Tie City of Wellington ■ had mourned for many years the absence of men of the calibre and character of Dr. Findlay. He congratulated every citizen that at last they had got an active political man who would make his mark in the history of the colony. He said this deliberately, because if health and strength were given to Dr. Findlay theie was no position in the political arena which Dr. Findlay was not capable of, and would not have a chance of, filling. " Dr. Findlay said he would say a few words in reply to those charges which had been hurled so reckleE&ly at the Administration. Criticism never had done and never would, do any honest man harm, but he asked them whether slander had not been a very Icyrge factor iri he •warfare which had begn carried on against the present Government? Mr. Duthie was fond of talking about jjeople who ought to be in gaol ; that was the Opposition criticism. (Applause.) Dr. Fuidlay went on to rijfer to the Bun 'iTuckr incident,- -andy more recently, an apology ..publishe&'MSy a- -Southern paper <for a charge it had made against the ;Premier, and characterised Mr. Duthie as "a " politic?! scold," 1 and -urged that 'if proof of the condemnation was only forthcoming the public would quickly Judge those against whom- it "was uttered. -The policy of the Opposition w,<js a policy of -abuse. ■•; MIRAMAR. " - Referring to the " Miramar cry," he I asked whether they were going to attempt to wieck the Government oe a ■mare .parochial ...questipn'.^sfs f° whetherjvo, ought,to '':}fofs alr^sre^ion ground' at JJlUvamjii ,or "not? >• ■ l£r the. Premier- did block "thai: Bui," it "would" be "ridiculous, 'in view of his career, to make that a ground for putting , him out of office. It- was alleged that by -blocking that -Bill the city was prevented jxoxn getting 'the Miramar Estate. That was absolute- ! [ly, wrong, as under section 355 of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1900, the City Council had the power to take that laijxl for recreation purposes, or for several other purposes which wero mention■',ecl.: He considered it was. imprudent to ;piit such a large area of land into the Ohpnds of sucli sTbody as. the City Coun.'.c'ili but th^t was a phase of the question which did not concern the Premier "a*' all, and he, ,pufc^ # ;fo: them; would ' they have heard anything "of this fuss about Miramar if there had not been ?this unexpected rise in. its, value lately? • They , t wero ' told 'taa,t -a,, syndicate* had bought a portion of the' estate at £50 an acre and sold it at £150 an acre, but no man of business would call that a tale at all. It was. the .sale of an option dependent upon- the success of a tontine scheme. As to the action of the Premier j'n blocking the- Bill, Dr. Findlay said there were at that time forty Bills on the Order Paper, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Wilford, and others were prepared, to oppojje' it, and if ifc had been allowed to proceed' -ii; would Lave been "talked cut," and tho thiriy-nine I other local Bills would have gone with it. Had any man who had the control of Parliament n .and the interests? ■ of-the whole- colonyVtb,-look after any right; 1 to sacrifice, ati v tfl9se Bills, :f: f or the .sake | of the Wellington Mirpmar Purchase, Bill? • No'; 'it. would have been a dereliction of duty. Theie was a motion to lift- the Bill from the top of the Order Paper to some other position. It was unfair for the people of this city to assume that th& members of the EJouse, including,, Hjr£ Seddon, had nothiug else to ,da but to--jprote,cf/ this "precious Miraraar ••PurfehaseL Bili, ,htijl Altey would- see 'how "utterly iftifair -ifc Was to try and make political capital in a colonial election out of this wretched municipal Miramar pwrcha-se. (Applause.) THE RAILWAYS. He was going to attempt to &how that Mr. Duthie did not uncleistaud the principle upon which our railways should be run, and it he did, ,he had not been fairly ingenuous ill the speeches he had made on the subject. Up to 1895 the railways wcie under the control of tlia Commissioners, who«e guiding principle was to in ike money, aud at no tune, probably, in the history of the colony had the lailway plant and stock been In ;uch a poor condition. Mr. Duthie said thut the n>ilways aie now in a v'-orked-out co.idition, and that if some of the method* pursued in New Zealand were done jii .hngiand the chances \\ei& that the directors would get three months' penal servitude. (Laughter.) It was sugge-ted that Si:* Joseph Ward had been, guilty of an offence übich consisted ( of putting in his pockets the price of the locomotives he had bought, and 'treating-' the colony as being wealthier to the extent of a hundred or more locornolives which had been added to the stock. " Mr. Duthie said tho offeuce lay in not' pacing for xbose locomotives out. of revepue; They were told that the railways" were worked out. Now, in 1895, there, were 269 locomo1 tives ; to-day they had- 362, and all of the best They had in 1895-"498 cars, to-day they had iOl. In 1895 they ]yid,2o4 Tans-; now they had 267; and the wagons iiid increased during the same period from 'B264 to 12,177. (Applause.) Those had all been bought within the last few years, and ye^ Mr. Duthie had the courage to tell a Wellington audience that our railways are in a worked-out condition. The railways were never in a better condition. (Apjjlause.) The plant vras up to date, the working pf the system was never better than it is to-cl.iy, and k was 1 idle and useless to tell ?r- intelligent audience that the railways were in a worked-out condition. It was a mruter of bookkeeping. He asked the business men — supposing they were buying a new ei.gine and new boiler to carry on their business, what would they charge that outlay to ? Would* they debit it to their income, and £0 ■wipe off ilicir income for the year and make ih^m^elves ou& as earning nothing, or would they add it->to their capital? Surely thrt Mas whaV"fchejr 'wpuld do, and that was what^^bjjd bs'en done iv yevr Zealand. J 'This .class " of criticism was realty •iJQTtte^ta^b^,'^ and showed to wlint *-a degree , fit. -'ctesperation a men must be brought when lia h'»d to hammer away at an. argument of that kind '.vith such useless emphasis. The railways had, he urged, been uin in the interests of the colony, and Sir Joreph Ward deserved credit, and not abiue, for what he h,id done in connection with the railways dining the past ton years. (Applause.) THE MIDLAND RAILWAY. Refeiring to the Midlnnt' i<nh\;iv, Dr. Findlay dccl.ncd that no better bargain was ever m.icle for this colony timn tho payment of £150,000 to tlie Midland Railway debemure-holJu . By tlia! payment tlieie was discharged a chum upon the colony which one d >/, sooner or later, would have had to be paid. It ; was due largely to the Premier's tact

and the way he had handled the msitter in London that he was enabled to induce the people concerned to take that sum, a>id cry a truce in the warfare that had been waged against our credit in London and he told them this, that that settlement would mean many times £150,000 to this country in the years to come. (Applause.) A FINANCIAL MATTER. The Opposition had made the charge that the Government Insurance Department had lent the Government £650,000 and took in exchange wretched colonial debentures at a very low rate of inter-e'-t. That charge had been disproved, and restated. That charge was untrue ; the Government had not taken one penny of the moneys of the Government Insurance Department for over nine years. These were debentures held by the Department, given to them, he believed, under a former Government, the Department asked the Government to renew them when they matured, and that was done. Now they came to the most ludicrous part of the whole 'thing. He was going to answer the charge on the authority of a man absolutely undoubted' in? point of reliability. He was going to answer Mr. Duthie on the authority of Mr. John Duthie. (Applause.) Mr. Duthie said the Government took this money from the Department, and that it was a wrong thing to do. But in 1896, as they would find in Hansard, Mr. Duthie actually proposed to the Premier that that course should be followed. It was a pity that Hansard had such a long .^ memory,, and Mr. Duthie such a short one. (Laughter and applause. ) THE COLONIAL DEBT. . The finances of the colony, s-aid Mr. Duthie, are in a sound position. What was the position? During the eleven years the Government had been dn office the debt ( had' increased -by £14,000, r OOO, and that amount was invested in securi ties which if sold to-day would probably bring from 50 to 100 per cent, more than the amount of the debt. What was represented by that amount? They had £2,772,000 worth of land, purchased under the ' Land for Settlements Act. Mr. Duthie- said the land was bought at too high a price, but he had conducted a great many compensation cases, and many witnesses, including all the sqniatters of Hawkes Bay, swore that the legislation of this Government had brought down the price of land, while the o^jner 'of^the HatumaJ.^Es'tate offered to give 'the Government; £60,000 -' if ifc would let him retain the " property. Out of the £14,000,000 there was £2,740,000 dent under, the Advances to Settlers Act/ and hehoped they had reoohed the time when no man w.ould say that that Act had, not been a boon to the colony. (Applause.) The colony had lost no money by advances, and the money advanced . was paying for the interest on the loan, > besides the departmental expenses, and he believed a trifle over. The above figures represented £5,500,000 of 'this £14,000,000. The next item was- loan's to local bodies. Formerly local bodies had to pay a high rate of interest, but the Government credit., was able to_procure money; and relend it at a lower rate of interest. Those loans were absolutely safe, and were doing good, at a low rate of interest throughout the colony. They amounted to £1,419,000. They- had thus reached £7,000,000 ' out 'of the £14,000,000. Then they had spent on the improvement of lands £500,000 ; £649,000 on native lands ; and £500,000 preference shares in the Bank of New Zealand, besides smaller amounts for consols, district railways, and so on. He had thus reached this position, that out of! , this 1 . ' £14,000,000 no ,less . ihan £10,425,621 w-a£ dii-ectjy interest-earn-ing. (Applause.) What was left? They .had £3,712,000 to account for.- How was it accounted for? The Government had spent in public works £3,260,000, and that left the small balance of £450,000, spread over the eleven years that the Government had been in office, divided -between the Government Accident InMirance, military settlers, and other smaller items. There they had accounted for in what he took to be directly or indheclly interest-bearing investments the whole sum of £14,0uU,000, save the £450,000 which he had mentioned. The Opposition invariably left out of sight the substantial, asset which represents „our loan expenditure. »Ifc had been conteped-edi-tim'a and again that you can judge fairly of the wealth' of a country by the extent of its public debt, thp inference being that the .money had been spent in the development of the country, and he said it was preposterous to tell them that we are going to the 3evil because we have borrowed fourteen millions in eleven years and spent' it so wisely as we have done. (Applause.) LONDON BAROMETER HIGH. When Opposition critics spoke of the increased interest burden since 1892, why did they foiget to sa}' that wages paid io the industrial people had increased during the same years by £1,280,000; that the incomes of the mercantile and wealthy • classes ' had increased' by J33,06Q,000 ; that there had been sur : pluses of revenue, and that annually k quarter of a million had been transferred from revenue to public works? The increased taxation of 10s 6d a head was no great burden for' having enormously added to the fuller development of the colony. Tho best judges of the state of the colony and its finances were the- financial critics in 'London, who lead up every J important question affecting the' colonies and pried into their finances, ' and who determined, uninfluenced by any emotion, the worth of colonial bonds and placed them high or low. Last month,, in, the 3 per cents, of all the colonies of.ui.ustralasia, New Zealand's stood far and away /the highest — namely, 96-i-New South Wales's being 91^, ,yicrprii's 93|, the others langing from 92^0 93r '. Those impartial judges told us that,' notwithstanding our "mad , gallop," ' our^ credit still stood above that of- ,tbe colonies near us. Which was an effective answer to the carping. ' ' "\ „' WANTED— SOMETHING %TO% TO , DEVELOP. ~ He was charged with having de'voloped no programme. The Evening Post had said so. To be candid^ he did' not think he had one to develop — at any rate, not one of abuse. There wps one thinsr, that might be developed locally, and that was Mr. Goschen?s system of terminable annuities, which- had been worked with success -at: Home, • 'Under our present advances to settlers system, the advances weie repaid bj; the borrowers in instalments, including interest and a small part of the principal, so that principal and. interest were repaid in thirty odd years. Mr. Goichen's gystem was for the' Government to raise money on terminable , annuities— to borrow from the public (say) one million, and to pay; 6 per cent, interest and principal so as to wipe off the whole in a given number of years. The Government would by this means be borrowing from the people in the' same way , as the Government was now ' lending to the settlers. It was right that we should share the burden of borrowing more faii'ly with posterity. The system would also he -a gratification to tho'-e who wished to put ti check on borrowing, as from the first the lepayments w ould be repayments of principal. It was worthy of consideration, and if he had the honour to lepresent them he would bring it before the wiser heads now ruling. PREFERENCE TO BRITISH TRADE AND SHIPPING. The Government's work was not yet over. The work of the Conference of Premiers provided an immense new field for' the advancement of "New Zealand. I

A preferential tariff in favour of the Old Country and against foreigners could be made in some directions where it would not prejudice our own industries in any way, and where it would cause no loss to the colony, but would even work out to the great advantage of the colony and the Old Land. By bringing the ties with the Mother Country to a material and substantial form we would lay the beginnings of a great reciprocity that would be of the utmost advantage to both. The second point was that of the coastwise laws. England had stood inactive for years while America had adopted navigation laws that had largely secured for American shipping her commerce to and fro. In Cromwell's time there was such a law in England, but Free Trade swept it away. The position had been brought to the notice of the Imperial Government, and steps were now being taken to establish a system of coastwise laws that would largely secure for British shipping British trade exI elusive of foreign competition. This would be even more important than Miramar. EXTENDING OVERSEA TRAFFIC. The Government had established a regular steam service — of which the first fruit was not yet — to South Africa — 5000ton 11-knot steamers with capacity for 100,000 carcases, and 1000 head of live stock.- We could not now estimate the advantage to our farmers of tapping and supplying the broadening South African market; and our strenuous and vigorous Government had taken the only course to d"o it. He understood that one firm had already ordered for the South African market 250,000 sheep, of a quality we did not send to London, and a large quantity of beef. Our produce export trade was far too much confined to London. The Manchester, Glasgow,' and Liverpool markets were far too much at the mercy of London, and direct shipments to those jnarkets would mean prices lower than they were now paying and higher man we were now getting. The Government jyas now considering the possibility of further oversea traffic in that direction. We were getting through the Conference an efficient naval defence, an up-to-date squadron, of which three ships were to be available for the training of Australian and New Zealand boys, who would subsequently settle in these colonies and form a reserve force of trained men. They must trust to the Government to work these things out to their' fullest fruit. These had been largely secured through the energy of the Premier in London. NO CLASS DISTINCTION.—UNIONISTS' PREFERENCE. He did not desire to address himself to one or other section of the community. The brotherhood of man was beginning and largely advanced in New Zealand, and caste and class must not be allowed to grow. He did not claim to represent labour any more than the mercantile and the farming classes. He did not support- class legislation, nor had the Government been partisan, but" what it had had to bestow had ' been, distributed widely. He looked forward to the further consolidation of labour — he believed with Carlyle that the organisation of labour was the great problem of the world. It would work down into embracing the whole community, every man a labourer. He was in favour of unionism as an imnerative thing among the working classes. There was no half-way place. We must give up this last frail echo of individualism; inusfc give up having unionist and non-unionist living in the community. If workers were forced not to strike, but to come before the Arbitration Court, it was not inconsistent to say that every labourer must be a unionist, The unions were not close corporations '; the door was open to every man with the qualifications of his trade. So long as he could thus enfranchise himself there was no reason why preference to unionists should not be compulsory. - NO PREFERENCE FOR ALIENS. He believed in the exclusion of undesirable aliens; but not in exclusion for poverty alone, as was done in America. It was better to raise a population of a million or less to a higher standard than to develop a population of ten times that number suffering from any sense of pinching poverty. Population should, not be increased at such a rate as to lower the standard of comfort and create excessive competition. With our natural wealth, he saw no reason why wages should not go on increasing, even with increasing numbers, but we should see that' aliens were brought into the colony not too hastily- • QUESTIONS. Asked if he was in favour of the hours of the employees on the Government and Manawatu railways being reduced to eight, Dr. Findlay said he was not in favour of passing, an Act expressly limiting the hours to eight, but he thought the fullest facilities should be given to working men both on tie Manawatu and on the other railways to have their hours fixed by the Arbitration Court just in the same way as other workers had. A suggested amendment of the Workers' Compensation Act to provide that a man meeting with an accident while in another's employ shall have full pay from the time of the accident till he is fit for work again, was submitted to the candidate. He said the present provision of the Act was very illogical, nnd had puzzled the Courts. He thought that where a man was injured in another man's employ he should receive full rate of wage till he was honestly fit for work again. There was a complete system of insurance and thus a distribution of the burden, which did not fall on the employer and was therefore no hardship. The Hare system as tried in a modified form in Tasmania and Queensland was a plant of sickly growth and had not taken root. He would stop the sale of Crown lands, and thought the colony should be protected against what was in effect the freehold — namely,' the 99 years' lease without "periodical revaluation. It was inconsistent to reject the freehold tenure, and in the next breath to apply this 99 years' lease. If the settler was given a cheap leasehold tenure, he should not object to pay to the colony the increased value roads and bridges gave to his property. Established industries must be protected and allowed to prosper. Of morality and religion, the former should be taught in Slate schools and the latter also so long as it was free from sectarianism. Unless .the sects could agree to a standard book — and ho did not think they could — he would be opposed to religious instruction in schools. A Stale bank of inconvertible issue would lead to depreciation. Vov a State bank — such as the purchase of tho Bank of New Zealand by the Government — there was more to be said. Questions having been (inswored, on tho motion of Mr. George Winder, seconded by Mr. R. Cnrmichnel. a vote of thanks to the candidate and "confidence in him as our representative" was passed, only one hand being held up against.

An elector who attended Mr. Hislop's meeting at Victoria Hall last night was anxious to know whether the candidate would, if elected, use his best endeavours to \\u,\a th" hours of Asyhun -it lend, r.ti reduced and their pay increased. Mr. Hislop replied that he had long recognised that the attendants in the Asylums were subjected to a great strain. Almost tlie | last minute he wrote before he left Cabin- j et office was one to the Inspector-General ' requesting him to prepare a scheme to improve the conditions of their employment. He considered that the attendants were worked ■ too long, and that most of the penalties imposed were too severe.