THE GENERAL ELECTION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5728, 25 October 1905, Page 7

THE GENERAL ELECTION

THE NEWTOWN SEAT. Hr Chapplo addressed a preliminary meeting of electors at Brooklyn last night. He dealt with the need of medical expert knowledge in Parliament, and paid a high tribute to the memory of the late Hon Hr Grace, who was so conspicuous a figure in Parliament for many years. The Public Health Hepartmont, ho maintained, spent too much time and money in a fruitless search for germs, when the health and development of school children, considerations of defective eyesight, spinal curvature, and other school troubles deserved so much attention. The infantile mortality in V olHngton during 1902 was 130 per 1000 births; in Melbourne only 127, and in Sydney 112. With our city’s natural advantages, there was something seriously wrong, and he pointed out the need of authentic popular literature on the care of children, infant-feeding, and physiology for young men to counteract the pernicious literature and fraud thrust upon them. Every school teacher should be taught to detect the early signs of diseases and defect in children under their care. The control of asylums, hospitals, prisons, and industrial schools required so much export medical knowledge that doctors were more needed than lawyers in Parliament. Ho strongly advocated taxation reform.- A just taxation should demand an equal sacrifice from each, but largo landed estates and wealth did not boar their fair proportion. The taxes on the necessaries of life pressed heavily on the worker, and though the cort of living had gone on increasing, practically nothing had been done to relieve the burden. Removal of taxes from the necessaries of life and increasing the graduated land tax would not only lessen the burden of living, but would bring land into the market, increase production, and cheapen rents and food products from the soil. We needed population, but the way land was locked up in largo estates, inaccessible for want of roads and bridges, and owned by natives, together with the high cost of living, hindered settlement. Our immigration system aided the influx of tradesmen and city livers, who increased city competition, lessoned wages, and increased tho unemployed. Only farm hands and country labourers should bo aided or encouraged. Of 1028 steerage passengers recently arrived only 116 were farmers. It was little uso encouraging immigrants, even of tho farming class, until land was made available and labour made more efficient by taxation reform. He attacked tho selfishness of Parliament, which had increased its own emoluments and privileges, and was prepared to sit up night and day to protect itseA behind a Criminal Code Amendment Bill, which curtailed freedom of speech and criticism, while the injustice that tho people laboured under by the Shops and Offices Act of last session still was unredrewssed. Ho touched on tho ’•'olloenso question, and emphatically declared that to strike out the top lino and carry this reform was practically useless unless men were also sent to Parliament loyal to the nolicense sentiment. Out of five victories at last local option poll three had been snatched away, and a Parliament with trado sympathies had failed to rise to the level of common British justice by giving new polls in place of those declared void. A number of questions were asked and answered, and a vote of thanks and confidence was carried unanimously on the motion of Mr Barr, together with a vote of thanks to Mr Hopkirk, who presided. Mr McLean invites his friends and supporters to meet him to-morrow evening at Victoria Hall. Mr Barber’s committeemen and others meet at the Shaw Studio, Riddifond street, this evening. Mr W. H. Field, M.H.R. for Otaki, will meet ladies of Johnsonville at the residence of Mrs Moore, senior, this afternoon for the purpose of forming a committee. Mr Wilford met his supporters at Khandallah last night. A strong committee was formed. Mrs Hislop invites her lady friends and husband’s supporters to meet this afternoon at the Central Committee rooms.