The Hawera Star. MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1931. MR LANG ECONOMISES.

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 8 June 1931, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1931. MR LANG ECONOMISES.

Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Kaupolionui, Otakeho, Geo, Piliama. Opunake, Normanby. Okaiawa Elthain, Ngaere, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Te Kiri, Hahoe, Low-: garth, Manutahi, Kakaramea, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Whenuakura, Waverley, Mokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere, Fraser Boad, and Ararata.

Mr Lang is reported to have startled the Commonwealth Premiers’ conferenee with a proposal to reduce the salary of every person employed by the Government to a maximum of £SOO per annum. It can be assumed that Mr Lang’s fellow-Premier.s are not the only persons who are startled by this heroic gesture. The Governor of New South Wales, who receives a grant of £SOOO per annum, the judges of the Supreme Court, whose salaries range from £3500 to £ISOO, and the Ministers of the Lang • Cabinet, who at present receive approximately £ISOO a year, will, if Mr Lang’s ideas are put into practice, have to accept £SOO per annum as their emolument. Though the financial position in Australia is desperately serious, the J world at large, no matter how sympathetic it may be at heart, will bo scarcely able to restrain its smiles. Mr, Lang is certainly putting up an Empire; record as a comic opera prime minister. Outside the Latin States of South America he.has no rival. He swept into office on a policy which might have been designed by Barnum, the famous showman credited witli the authorship of the legend that “there is one born every minute.’’ Mr Lang certainly I shares with the best showman a knowledge of his fellow-men in the masses —up to a point. He know, when he set out to woo the electors, that appeals to the cupidity of the masses would striko a more responsive note than appeals to their conscience and patriotism. He was shrewd enough to realise that the men in the big unions, who have been educated for years on soap-box oratory, would see something attractive in a policy that restored wage cuts and raised the standard of living. And Mr Lang was right then. To-day, however, he is not displaying such a sure touch. He has rather lost contact with the masses, and no wonder. It is one thing to anticipate how the mob will act when it is well-fed and only hungry for more than it already possesses; it is quite another thing to speculate upon the responses of a mob which seeks, not only a comparatively better share of the good things of life, but is claiming for anything which is better than its present lot of unemployment, misery and starvation. Undoubtedly, Mr Lang is losing his .magic touch. A few short months ago he was the Prime Minister who could defy the economic laws —so lie led his supporters to believe. He could brazenly afford to make impudent gestures in the direction of the Bank of England and the ‘ ‘ overseas money lenders. ’ ’ He could rise up before his people and assure them that there was no slump, no world-wide depression, nothing, in short, to prevent him from drawing money out of an empty treasury; that there was a conspiracy on'the part of the capitalists, within and beyond Australia. to batten upon the “poor Aus-' tralian working man,’’ but that he, Lang, laughed such enemies of his class to scorn. All that must have sounded very inspiring in many quarters outside the trade unions, for Lang was given his chance by the electors. The time of reckoning has arrived, how T ever, and Mr Lang finds that even he must attend Premiers’ conferences in order to find ways and means of retrenchment. Repudiation of debts he has attempted, but that has not succeeded in making i him the hero lie anticipated; it has only resulted in making him the most despised politician in Australia in the eves of the people of the other States who have had to shoulder his State’s i debts. Mr Lang has evidently realised that his game of bluff is over. He has thrown in his hand and sided with others who have earlier admitted that no Labour Government, nor any form of Government can make Australia into ni trade unionists’ paradise. But now that he is converted to recognition of. the need for economies, the New South Wales Premier is being shown up in his true colours. He never was a constructionist anrl to-day, when Australia is in need of statesmanlike ability on the part of her politicians, the man who has done more, perhaps, than any other individual to discredit his country in the eyes of the financial world, is revealed as being totally bereft of ideas. His contribution to the twenty per cent, reduction plan is the £SOO per annum maximum. Mr Lang knows full well the absurdity of regarding that as a practical contribution to the solution of the problem. If he were a labouring Labour man. in his private life there might be some excuse for him; but Mr Lang is in the land agency business in private life and knows full well the exact value of his plan. However, he apparently has not given up his faith th.at he still knows best what will go down with the public; it would seem that even in this time of crisis for his country he is quite content- if he can continue to shine as the champion of the “have-nots’’ and the enemy of the ‘ ‘ haves. ’ ’