Evening post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1935. THE RECORD OF FOUR YEARS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 133, 2 December 1935, Page 10

Evening post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1935. THE RECORD OF FOUR YEARS

"We intend to begin where the late Richard John Seddon and his colleagues left off." This statement, made by Mr. Savage when it was first known that Labour would have its chance to begin, is interesting for the implied claim it contains to political lineal descent from the Seddon regime. There were others in the election who made similar claims and were ready to contend strongly that they alone held the Liberal tradition and were guided by the Seddonian inspiration. Such claims cannot be decided in the present time. We are far enough from the days'of Seddon to be able to arrive at a reasonably just estimate of his principles; but we cannot yet declare with the historian's freedom ( from prejudice who were, in a wide sense, Seddon's colleagues and where they left off. No exact test can be applied. Even if we consider measures, rather than men and methods, who can judge, without risk of the judgment being'reversed on appeal, that Massey was not continuing the Seddon plan when he liberalised loans from die Advances Office, even though the 95 per cent, advance eventually overburdened the office? Or who would say that the departure from direct State action towards State guidance and co-opera-tion by the change from Advances to Settlers to Mortgage Corporation was a retracing of Seddon's steps and not an advance to suit the times?

There are other measure tests that may be applied; but with no conclusive result. . Seddon sought to create State governing influences in finance and industry— not to do the whole business but to do a sufficient part to set the pace in insurance charges, coal prices, and so on. Was it in line with this policy to create a Reserve Bank which would not compete for ordinary banking business, but would exercise a controlling influence over credit and currency? To these questions no final answer can yet be !given. We must wait for history to declare it. And we must wait for history to give a clear. verdict on the work of the Government which is to resign on Wednesday. We can say at present that the Government did not fail through lack of courage. It never ran away from what it deemed to be its duty. Its failure^ if it were a failure of the Government, and not failure of the public to give credit for success, lay rather in loss of contact with the public, so that public opinion was not 'reflected in the policy, and the effect of the policy on the public was imperfectly perceived. The Government, in other words, became too detached. This was an error that Seddon never made. If he became a dictator he never became aloof. He knew that what he dictated was what the public desired.

We think that it will be found in time that much of the Coalition Government's work was also what the public would have desired, had pains been taken to maintain close contact between the Administration and the people. The public, could they have expressed their opinion directly, would have decided for financial stability, for relief for the workless, for aid to farmers, for organisation of the farming industry, and for measures which would have a directive influence in private finance. All these things the Coalition Government provided, but it lost the credit due to it for meritorious achievement because it did not keep in step with the public. Sometimes it went too far and sometimes it did not go far enough. It went too far, we believe, in its anxiety to aid the farmer without reckoning carefully the cost of the aid given. Having made the decision that high exchange was the methojl that should be used it refused to see that this method involved inequitable distribution of benefits, giving the rich farmer most and the poor farmer least. It went too far even in seeking' financial stability and Budget equilibrium, by maintaining all its heavy taxes when it had a margin for increased expenditure. And it went too far in exactly the opposite direction in allowing the Unemployment Fund to accumulate so that wage taxation could be reduced before satisfying the public that the deserving unemployed were receiving adequate relief. The Government's errors were, we believe, mainly in details that were not essential to its policy. Except for the high exchange, the lines that it followed met generally with public approval. The proof of this lies in the probability that Labour, judging by Mr. Savage's statements, will not undo a great deal that the Government has done. It will introduce modifications—perhaps in the Mortgage Corporation, and the Executive Commission of Agriculture and perhaps in the Reserve Bank. But it will probably be found that, by modifying and not reversing or repealing, the Labour Government will acknowledge that the foundations of most of the constructive work of its predecessor were sound. And when we consider it calmly there has been a vast amount of construction. Stable public finance, the inauguration of .reserve banking, mobilisation of

mortgage finance, creation of an authority for the relief of unemployment and its progressive removal, and constitution of an organisation to guide and co-ordinate production and marketing—these are great achievements, despite their imperfections. Some of the imperfections arose because the Government had a sectional vision. Whatever appeared to be of benefit to the farmer won its approval though the farmer benefit might be outweighed by a disability imposed upon the consumer, the merchant, or the worker, or a departure from principle. As a Labour Government will look at the work differently it will automatically correct some of the faults which were due to a onesided view. It has its opportunity ,in fact (for such is the irony of political, life) to correct, polish, and finish what the Coalition Government began and then take credit for the whole construction. But Labour is in its genesis sectional. By claiming kinship with Seddon it suggests, that it wishes now to have its sectional origin forgotten. Yet it must be warned by the fate of its predecessor. If it carries correction so far as to swing from one sectionalism to another the correction will become a fault more grievous than any fault of the Coalition Government, for the Coalition had the excuse that it was confronted with the greatest depression New Zealand has known, with no precedents to guide it and no previous failures to warn it. Under such circumstances the wonder is not that it erred, but that its errors were not greater.