WEALTH OF PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1938, Page 23

WEALTH OF PEOPLE

THEIRS TO ENJOY

HELPING THE SICK

Speaking at Lyall Bay last night, the Hon. K. Semple, Labour candidate for ■Wellington East, discussed the monetary system and said that the people's labour, skill, and inventive genius were the source of all the wealth in the world. That being so the people ishould control the mechanism of wealth. It should hot be in the hands of a "band of Shylocks" to manipulate money and cause booms and slumps. * Mr. C. J. Hay presided over, about 300 electors.

The late Government had tried to make the people live on themselves without an income, but the Labour Government had restored wages, salaries, and incomes. Right through history when anyone attempted to improve the conditions of the people the ;i*pries .asked, "Where is the money coming from?'*'

."For thirteen years the Labour members had introduced an Invalidity Bill, Mit every time it was introduced the Leader of the National Party and his fiiends asked, "Where is the money cdjning from?"

'■■ '"This' supposedly un-Christian organisation—the Labour Party—as soon as it got into power passed a Bill to help the invalids who can not help themselves,"-said Mr. Semple;. The Labour 'Government had not asked where the money was to come from— it had taken it from the fellow at the top' for' the Unfortunate at the bottom. It,had put into operation the teachings of "the Master.

■Under the Labour Government there were 'no hungry women and children, but .under the last Government they had starved in the midst of plenty, Mr, Semple said. Yet, during the election campaign, it had been suggested that the lives of the women and children were not safe.

. The National Party had had a deathbed repentance, Mr. Semple said. They were going to give the young people £100 to buy furniture, but during the depression mothers sold their furniture to buy food and some pawned their wedding rings.

The Labour Government believed in giving the young people a good enough wage to enable them to buy their own furniture, Mr. Semple said, and the suggestion that "New Zealand should be turned into a pawnshop" was an insult that would not be forgotten by the young people.

"They say back to freedom," said Mr. Semple. "Back to freedom for the usurer to play pitch and toss with humanity. Are you going to stand for that on Saturday?"

In concluding his address Mr. Semple appealed to the electors to return Labour on Saturday. He did not ask it for himself, he said, but because he did riot want to see a repetition of the conditions that had existed during the depression years.

Whatever the electors' verdict was, he said, the Labour members could look tli cm straight in the face and say: "We've done our best for you."

Mr. F. M. Earle moved that Mr. Semple should be thanked for his address and that confidence should be expressed in Mr. Semple and the Labour Government. This was seconded by Mr. R. Dowdell, and was carried without dissent.