Grey River Argus TUESDAY, August 28, 1928. THE DIVIDING LINE.

Grey River Argus, 28 August 1928, Page 4

Grey River Argus TUESDAY, August 28, 1928. THE DIVIDING LINE.

Although there will probably be as many non-Labourite opponents as there will be Labour candidates standing against the Reform Party at the General Election this year, there are at least some candidates who still talk—tongue in cheek—of the United and Reform Parties combining to present a single front against Labour. This suggestion does not emanate from any other desire than the ancient one to exploit the worker by deny! ing him a say in the government

of the country. This is the avowed end of those politicians who declare openly that they will sink every ideal of party loyalty and

every other political consideration in order to prevent Labour attaining governmental power. This, indeed, is no more than history repeating itself. It is necessary only to go back in New Zealand history to the first Administration which gave the worker a hearing to get proof. Against Grey, Ballance and Seddon the same outcry was raised as that against Labour in our own day. It might have been Labour’s present political Leader speaking when the first statesman to raise the banner of democracy in New Zealand, Sir George Grey, just 56 years ago, declared on August 16th, 1872, at Wellington: “What created capital was the earth —the land —and human labour applied to it. They first had the earth to deal with —■ senseless absolutely. That great mass for years had been the care of judges and legislators, who had striven to keep it from the many for the sake of the few, from millions of human beings with passion and hope, capable of feeling great sorrow and misery, who felt they could hardly obtain immor tality hereafter! For hundreds of years these millions, with their sorrows and their suffering, . had been kept for the sake of this insensate body—this mass of earth —in a state of abject poverty. The thought Lad been for years past how to use the earth so that the few might be enriched by the many; but what they had to solve now was how to use the earth for the good of mankind at large. He felt that unless they gained liberal laws, which would enable them to send proper men to Parliament, there would be greater degrees of oppression in New Zealand than in Great Britain.” It is generally conceded to-day that Grey was the father of Ne-w Zealand democracy, and it cannot be denied that his stand then was exactly where Labour is to-day on the question of the rights of the great majority—the wage-earning class—as against the privileges or the minority—the wealthy, monopolistic class. One of the last utterances of Seddon, ere he set out from Australia on the voyage which took him across the “Great Divide,” was that he was going back to New Zealand to nationalise the food supply of the people, and at the outset of his Ministerial career also his stand was exactly where Labour’s is to-day, as he showed by his speeches in 1890 on the maritime strike, when he said: “I would be wanting in my dutv to the people of this colony did’l not protest against, such remarks going forth, to the effect that the Unionists are banded together against law and order. 11 is without foundation in fact.” Again, on September 15th, 1896, he declared in Parliament: “I do honestly trust that the farmers of this country will eo-opcrate. with the labouring men engaged in the various tra les, and who have joined the Unions. I do trust that they will be joined together by bonds of union, and will not be crushed by capital!” That he had a prophetic vision would almost seem to have been demonstrated in our day by the millstone of mortgages around the farmer’s neck, the unemployment, and the starvation relief wages which have become so notorious. That the same statesman did no more waver than Labour has done in the conviction that the. forces behind the anti-Labou.- politicians are a menace to the masses it si.own by his speech a few days before his death, at a ba’iqrmt given in his honour by the Commonv ealth Labour Party. He said: “So great is the money power, so great is lit grip, even on New Zealand. holding as it does the means of life, that there is no single Act, however originally intended for the bei efit of the worKrrs. but has been turned into a means and an aid for bringing more wealth to the already wealthy classes, and leaving an ever-lessening share to those whose labor,tr produced that wealth.” This is the perversion of legislation which explains why the vested interests to-day decry the Labour Party, and insinuate through’politicians that none of the professions of the other Parties is so important but that it could not be nullified in an attempt to render the working class impotent in Parliament. Those politicians who have become-re creant to such liberal principles as they once professed, in order to secure their positions, would not now acknowledge the truth enunciated m 1890 by the man who led the Party which they have live I 1o emasculate —the truth contained in the following declaration of • Seddon in 1890: “Where is the true expression of the real matter at issue? Is it to be found in the columns of the leading newspapers of the colony? Most decidedly not. If anything occurs against Unionism, i.t is paraded in large type through the country. We have it served up at breakfast, at dinner and at supper. AVe have it when we rise in the morning, and when we go to bed. But when the Unionists do that which is right and laudable, we do not hear of that. ’ ’ Undoubtedly the role allotted the Unionist by the, politicians who talk of keeping Labour at any cost from power in the State is that of the willing slave, who shall be seen and mt heard, shall suffer and remain meek and silent. One of the few occasions, however, when the prin ciple of human equality dictates that the worker shall equal anyone else is at hand, and from one end to the other of the Dominion there are good indications that the working class as a whole will assert itself more unitedly and effectually than ever before at the ballot box.