The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1922. MR DICKSON’S ADDRESS.

Evening Star, Issue 18137, 29 November 1922, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1922. MR DICKSON’S ADDRESS.

Mb J. M, Dickson Is never likely to set the Port Chalmers ■waterfront on fire, This constitutes one of several roasona why hia eight years in Parliament should be extended to eleven. Ho claims to represent the Reform Party, the Liberal Party, and tho Moderate Party; whereas his opponent, Mr Stephens, beans the hall-mark of tho Labor Representation Committee. Mr Dickson at Port Chalmers last night called him a Revolutionary Socialist. There Lave been times when Mr Stephens trod his follow Labor aspirants to Parliament would hare preened their feathers, especially those adjacent to this label, and there will bo times again when they will do bo { but not just now. The nearer election day approaches the more irascible they seem to become if anyone suggests that they arc extremists in anything. Destruction is a word they have erased, temporarily, from their political dictionary. They are all for construction, end anyone who raises a sceptical eyebrow is promptly accused of mud-slinging. However, many of their speeches are on record, and last night Mr Dickson gave a few apposite extracts from Mr Holland and Mr Rartram which should effectually silence the protestations of Mr Munro, on whose fairly capable shoulders seems to be falling the burden of every other Labor campaign in and around Dunedin besides hia own. Tho rescue of Labor’s land policy from the limbo of ‘Hansard" during the present campaign Inis proved an embarrassing find for Labor’s cause. Its unworkable crudity is in itself sufficient to make the most casual of citizens prick his ears in vague alarm. Further contemn plation of the idea of tho thing functioning under even the most capable and upright administration must surely cause visions of the beautiful tangle that would be euro to weave, itself should the party of Mr Holland be in charge of tho machinery. A kitten with a ball of fingering would be a circumstance to it. A hotter parallel would bo a troop of mischievous apes at large in an orderly woollen mill. Mr Dickson last night faithfully reproduced the Holland-Savage outline. It would need tho pencil of an Aubrey Beardsley to fill in tire horrid detail. If only people would realise it, Mr Dickson’s hope that he will poll 'the votes of Reformers, Liberals, and Moderate Labor would be liberally fulfilled. Beneath the surface of tho land coal sometimes occurs. Mr Dickson delved and exposed some, incidentally exposing also Labor’s stereotyped and ludicrous explanation of the expensive heaps of imported ooal which dob the dominion’s railway depots. Tho country was then undergoing an industrial crisis, and in the endeavor to avert its threatened effects the Government had to pay a price or declare itself a moral coward, in whom any chance application of Marxism would induce a heart seizure. Fortunately the Government showed itself possessed of tougher moral fibre than the extremists thought. Mr Massey refused to email at the more mention of Marx, and now that another industrial crisis has partly developed he shows tho same imperturbability. It is curious that tho present shipping dispute, which has its roots deep in the subsoil of our political field, refuses to bud or blossom under the forcing atmospheric conditions of a General Election. Labor candidates, in avoiding thjs very enticing and smouldering, if not burning, subject, are showing a degree of self-control which is remarkable-some people say ominous. Other parties seem equally shy. Mr Dickson waa speaking last night to the maritime section of his electorate, which would presumably have been peculiarly intrigued by references to ships and those who own or man them; hut the flavor which that kind of salt would have given to tho fare was denied them. Mr Dickson “ resumed 1 his seat amid applause” without having visited either the forecastle or the stokehold,' or even the cook’s ralley. However, at question time a whiff of the briny blew in with .the mention of a better landingstage at Port Chalmers for the fishermen. It eooma that there are still hopes of one. The Railway Department is not obstructionist in the matter, and Mr Dickson, ff re-eleoted, is going to persevere. When one thinks of the reams of electioneering matter and then remembers this apparently trivial bit of useful work having been smothered under it for years, one is tempted to doubt whether our system of government is quite so perfect as It might be. Possibly this nou-materialised landingstage is the nucleus of the charge which, Labor hurls at tho Government of being party to a wicked conspiracy to bring about unemployment by refraining from undertaking developmental work.