The Evening Star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1925. THE CHALMERS SEAT.

Evening Star, Issue 19078, 22 October 1925, Page 6

The Evening Star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1925. THE CHALMERS SEAT.

Thk Chalmers scat’is not one that has furnished any particular excitement by its election contests in recent years. Consistency has been the motto of its electors. Mr Dickson was elected for the constituency in 1914, and bo has remained its member since, defeating a succession of opponents by fairly easy margins. At the last contest bis solo challenger was a Labor candidate, and that promises to be the same again, though the candidate is not the same. Mr Connelly, in addressing the electors at Portobello on Tuesday night, was in the position of soliciting support for his platform on what is more particularly Mr Dickson’s native heath, but this did not affect the good hearing that was given to him. His chairman described him as a “jolly decent chap,” and that testimonial may very well have been deserved. But bo seems to have felt himself at a disadvantage, in a manly rural electorate, in having to present his Labor programme as one that would appeal to farmers, otherwise why the necessity of going so far back into past history as the time of Sir Frederick 'Whitaker? The moral was not obvious in his reference to so many past governments, unless it was intended to suggest that all of them were better than Reform. The point of one comparison was badly blunted, when, alter stating that “ all that humanitarian legislation was bitterly opposed by the present Reform Party,” Mr Connelly found it necessary to add “though not by tho present members of that party.” At the same timo the suggestion was very constantly maintained that everything had been bad that has "been done by Reform. If many farmers went bankrupt in tho “ slump ” time of a few years ago (though not so many in these southern electorates), the cause had to be found, by bis analysis, less in the mistakes of new farmers and in economic causes which were world-wide, producing everywhere much the same results, than in tho maladministration of the New Zealand Government. There is naturally another side to this indictment, and it was presented by Mr Dickson in his address at Broad Bay last evening. Reform can take credit for its own programme of humanitarian legislation. It has extended and liberalised the system of old age pensions, extended widows’ pensions, and made a beginning with a pension for tho blind. The State Advances office has been used by it, for the assistance of struggling settlers and tho provision of homes for the people, on a scale unknown before. The Workers’ Compensation Act has also been liberalised. The revenue from Customs has certainly been increased, but that has not been 'the result of heavier duties. On the contrary, tho war dutyon tea has been removed and the duty on tobacco reduced. In tho face of that record, it is an absurdity to contend that the Government has been solicitous for the interests of only a section of the people. The Reform Administration would have ended in most certain overthrow two years after its commencement, or eleven years ago, if such had been its method. The Labor case is overdone on its destructive side. But that is not its worst disability. "What ought to condemn it utterly is that it is more wrong on its constructive side, with defects threatening far more injury to the country that might practise it than any ideas or act of the Reform Party. The great goal of the Labor Party is Socialism, put first as its objective in its official programme. On that system Jet us quote Mr L. T. Hobhouse, who has not set forth tho reasons for its fallacy more strongly than others, but has done so with a rare succinctness:

Mechanical Socialism, he writes, is founded on a false interpretation of history. It attributes the phenomena of social life and development to the sole operation of the economic factor, whereas the beginning of sound sociology is to conceive society as a whole in which all the parts interact. Mechanical Socialism, further, is founded on a false economic analysis .which attributes all value to labor, denying, confounding, or distorting the distinct functions of the direction of enterprise, the unavoidable payment for the use of capital, the productivity of Nature, and the very complex social forces which, by determining the movements of dejnand and supply, actually fix the rates at which goods exchange with one another. Politically, mechanical Socialism presupposes a class war, resting on a clear-cut distinction of classes which does not exist. Far from tending to clear and simple lines of cleavage, modern society exhibits a more and more complex interweaving of interests, and it is impossible for a modern revolutionist to assail “ property ” in the interest of “Labor” without finding that half the “ Labor ” to which he appeals has a direct or indirect interest in property. As to the future, mechanical Socialism conceives a logically developed system of the control "of industry by government. Of this ail that need bo said is that the construction of Utopias is not a sound method of social science; that this particular Utopia makes insufficient provision for liberty, movement, and growth; and that in order to bring his fdeals into the region of practical discussion what the Socialist needs is to not a system to be substituted aa a whole for our present arrangements, but a principle _ to guide statesmanship in the practical work of reforming what is amiss and developing what is good in the actual fabric, of industry, A principle so ap-

plied grows if it has seeds of good in it, ana so in particular the collective control of industry will be extended in proportion as it is found in practice to yield good results. That is a statement which commends itself more by its reasoning tho more it is read and digested.