"SERFDOM" IN NORTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19170, 9 November 1925, Page 11

"SERFDOM" IN NORTH.

DISAPPOINTED CANDIDATE.

A LABOUR WORD PICTURE.

" WHISKERS AND MORTGAGES."

"I Lave just been spending; six weeks among bogs, butter-fat, whiskers and mortgagehold," said Mr. A. S. Richards, the defeated Labqur candidate for Marsden, in a speech to a Labour meeting in the Strand Theatre last night. Mr. Richards appeared to have left the field of battle with a mixture of contempt and dislike for the northern dairy tanner. Ho described himself as "the leader of the gallant 800 from the boys of the North," and asserted that whereas fhero had been no Labour organisation in Marsden before' his campaign, he had left a solid, compact body of fighters, consisting of the 827 men arid women who had voted for him. "The Reformers in the North are swollen with the infection of Coatesitis," ho said. "There are two idols in the North—His Lordship Gordon Coates, the saviour of mankind, and Mr. Murdoch, who has been overthrown. The average 'cocky' in the North is not an intelligent human being in the ordinary sense of the i word, but a land-serf." | Mr. Richards ironically described the | arrival of the Prime Minister at Kaipara j Flats ("inhabited mostly by 'flats' ") on the tail-end of a passenger train —the most appropriate way, because it indicated where he would finally be in politics. Twentv-seyen farmers, he remarked, clad * # 9 mostly in rags and dirt, had gathered humbly round Mr. Coates, had presented him with what purported to be a testimonial and had asked him to allow them some metal "buckshee" to fill tip a bogholo in one of their roads. Mr. Coates had merely laughed and said: "I would S advise you to get all you can 'buckshee.' I You will need it." [ In the back blocks, in places inhabited I only by a Maori, a kiwi bird, and a dog, he had seen large portraits of Mr. Coates, ! issued bv the Reform Party. Everywhere in the North people were afraid to be associated publicly with Labour. They feared that some stock agent would see them and tell the mortgagee. They were afraid that the Labour candidate had bombs in his pocket. One newspaper had refused to print a line about Labour meetings except for payment. "Russia under the Tsars was mild compared with the suppression and oppression in the North." declared Mr. Richards in conclusion, "but I am glad that I knocked the Nationalist in the wind-bag so that he will never recover again."