"THE NEW EASTERN QUESTION."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9808, 1 May 1895, Page 3

"THE NEW EASTERN QUESTION."

TO THE EDITOII. Sib, — The perusal of Mr. Stead's Splendid Paupers," followed so speedily by the startling news from China and Japan, appears to have so upset the mental equilibrium of your correspondent Mr. Charles Brown that already in imagination he sees Ping Yang Yaloo installed at Chatsworth, and Count Ito taking possession of New Zealand in the name of the Mikado! We trust that your leader in the same issue (23rd instant) has somewhat allayed his apprehensions of a Mongolian invasion "vi et armis," but certainly against Asiatic skill in weaving cotton at a minimum cost neither fleets nor armies can avail. If the existence of the English nation deponds on 44 selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any other people," then indeed it would seem that the day of doom approaches. But surely this is a most narrow stand for a great nation to base itself on !—a stand which, as Carlyle said fifty years ago, and as we shall shortly see for ourselves, is " not capable of enduring." Must England really perish " if it do nob undersell all other nations to the end of the world ?" Can England not afford to say to China and Japan, 44 We care not, for the present, to make cotton any cheapor. Do you, if it seem so blessed to you, fill your luntrs with cotton fuzz and copperas fumes, and make cotton cheaper." This is indeed the stand that we shall be forced to take by the logic of events, for the "foreign market" is closing, and the foreigner is learning to supply himself. When England was " Merry England," and steam and electricity were yet unknown, the land supported tho people, and there were neither paupers nor foreign markets worth mentioning. Now tho land of England is going out of cultivation and the people are standing idle, or are cooped up in the towns frantically struggling to live by "supplying the foreign market." Hunger and misery are rapidly teaching the English workers that they can no longer rely on 44 commercialism " and its " law of supply and demand" for the support of themselves and their families, and they are preparing to organise their own labour for the supply of their own wants. How rapidly they are travelling on the road to Socialism is shown by the flood of Socialist literature which is saturating the country, and by the phenomenal popularity of such books as " Merrie England" and other works dealing with the organisation of labour. In this colony the same spirit finds expression in the popularity of the Labour legislation of tho present Government. If, then, in our endeavours to forecast the future, we Mark what main currents draw the years, we must admit this strong and unmistakable drift, and as the Socialist ideal grows clearer and more vivid, it becomes increasingly hopeless to think of opposing it, except by means of an alternative ideal equally far-reaching and comprehensive. Labour is bent on freeing itself from intolerable misery by State organisation, but there are those who dread the consequent extension of Governmental interference with the daily life of the people, and who see clearly that unjust dealing with the land is the root and origin of all the trouble, and that it is therefore wiser to insist on just land laws than to multiply questionable labour laws. It has been demonstrated and proved that tho law ot rent gives to the lundlord the whole of the excess in annual value above that of the worst land in use, and thus, so far as the labourer is conccrned, the whole country is blighted from end to end with the poverty of its most sterilo tracts, and landlordism makes tho pittance which the barren wilderness may yield, tho gauge of labour's wage throughout the realm ! The essence of slavery is that the owner consumes the produce of the slave's labour without giving any equivalent beyond a bare subsistence. The slave-labour done in England to-day is represented by about 150 millions sterling annually levied in ground rent, for which no equivalent is given, while even a bate subsistence for the slaves themsolves becomes more and more problematical. Could such a tribute be wrung from the English workers if, instead of working for 44 land" owners, they were working for 41 slave" owners ?

It is indeed depressing to think that tho close of a century which has witnessed such marvellous progress in all the arts of war and peace, and in all tho means of producing wealth, should find our people steeped in poverty, misery, and enforced idleness, and actually alarmed for their very existence because a nation of little brown men on the opposite side of the globe is suddenly waking up from a sleep of centuries, and is paying us the compliment of imitating our methods. The men who are making " New Japan" have been educated in Europe, and are quite abreast (if not a little ahead?) of the ideas of our time. Count Ito, the Premier, went to England when » lad, 30 years ago, and in an interview, published in the Westminster Gazette on 4th March ultimo, he thus speaks of his English host (Mr. Hugh Matheson): "I owe a great deal to him, and I shall never forget his home at Hampsbead, though it is thirtyone years since I saw it. Some day, when I can secure a holiday, 1 look forward to re-visiting Europe; bub you see how it is, I am always at work, and here is still very much to do." Surely there is something shameful in our fear of this new comer among the nations, j whose Premier, educated in an English home, is modelling his country's policy on English patterns, so far as reason approves them.

But if England's ideal is still to bo the production of "cotton cloth ab a farthing an ell cheaper than any other nation," thon indeed we may as well shut up shop, for not only is Japan, as Count Ito says, " not hampered by debts," but she is not likely to be burdened by " landlordism" either. By last mail we received, from a Japanese Single Tax Club, a printed circular dated Tokio, 20th February, 1895, and addressed to " The Single Tax Clubs of the World !" from which we quote as follows : — In many respects conditions hare are favourable to a propaganda of this kind. More than half the area of Japan is yet Govern ment land 1 . Besides this nearly every village has its commons, which could be surveyed and leased, the rent being divided. Besides this, the subjoct of taxation is now prominently before the people. We want tc do what we can to enlighten the thinking people on the two subjects of the ' Single Tax' and 'Proportional Representation.' The 'Story of my Dictatorship fitted to Oriental conditions—is ready for the printers, single tax stamps, printed in short pithy sentences, are now in use, lectures and newspaper articles have been doing their work. . . . There are hundreds of people here who can read English, and the papers do nob object to publishing single tax matter." Hoping the foregoing may induce some of your readers to consider more carefully what are the really threatening dangers of the present day,— as you truly remark in closing your article, " tho futuro is big with possibilities.—Wo are, sir, for the Ground Rent Revenue League, Edward Withy, President F. M. King, Hon. Sec.