CURRENT TOPICS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8188, 1 August 1912, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS

THREE DAYS MORE. There are three days more in -which an opportunity will be given our readers to snare the ,£SO worth of prizes in connection with tho simple skill competition outlined in to-day's issue. The entries are now rolling in in real earnest. Those who do not compete will get no prizes. THE RULING PASSION. It seemed clear from yesterday s P ro " ccodings in the House of Representatives that the vast responsibilities of the Mininter for Customs rest heavily upon him. All through the sitting he was simply bursting to get on to his feet and when at last ho did so addressed members with a personal flippancy which led to tho Speaker directing attention to the rules which govern debate. Mr Fishers anxiety to assume the erect posture was foiled on several occasions, and at last, robbed of tho chance of further speech and unc.blo to restrain himself longer, he got up and wandered about tho chamber while the Prime Minister was proposing a resolution with reference to 1 the death of tho Mikado. Mr Fisher has clearly mado up his mind to get right into tho centre of the picture. EARNINGS OF SAVINGS-BANK DEPOSITS. Tho introduction of "sound economic methods" and "Reform" into the financial transactions of the Government has not been allowed to. suffer delay. The first thing done by the Minister for Finance apparently was to go round to his friend the Postmaster-General _ and borrow ,£BOO,OOO of post office savingsbank deposits at a reduced rate of interest. This may bo "Reform" or Sharp Practice, we are not clear which, since it is just possible that the terms will turn out to be synonymous, but in any case the transaction, is unjustifiable. There is no possible excuse for cutting down the earnings of savings-bank deposits in this way, and the Prime Minister has mado a particularly bad beginning so far os his theory (when in Opposition) is concerned cbout the post office depositors being entitled to "as much for the loan of their funds as tho moneylenders in London are.” In practice his Ministers appear to imagine they should get less than anyone else. We take leave to remind the Postmaster-General that ho owes a duty to the savings bank depositors, and that these people have now a very serious reason to quarrel with him for not protecting their interests more effectively. Mr Rhodes should wake up —and tho public too—after a "deal” like this in which the Minister for Finance seemis to havo_ got to work very early in the morning indeed.

WANT TO GRAZE MORE. We hope the public will keep a vigilant eye on the Prime Minister and some of his Wairarapa friends who want to get special legislation passed to prevent the cutting up of the small grazing runs in the neighbourhood of Mangamahoe. A deputation of runholders and their spokesmen waited on Mr Massey thei other day—headed appropriately by Mr W. C. Buchanan, M.P.—and the talc*! they told of the horrors of their surroundings were enough to bring tears to the eyes of a graven image. Th-un recountal was the more sorrowful bej cause its import was to show why they should be allowed to hold on to th* land, and why a lot of other peopl* should be prevented from getting a footing on the soil in that neighbourhood. It was said by the special pleaders that there were no roads nnd_ no metal, the land was nnder water, dairying had proved a failure (men with four thousand acres had tried dairying and failed!), and in fact the whole neighbourhood was going to the demnition bow-wows. Since the report of that interview appeared Mr A. W. Hogg has thrown considerable light on the sorrows of these backwoodsmen who have been paying 6d and 9d for their lands, and allowing their neighbors to tax themselves for tho improvements. It has remained, however, for Mr E. Judd, a settler on the spot, to blow the deputation out of the water. His communication (taken from the "Wairarapa Age") appears in to-day's issue. It should ho a solemn warning to Messrs McGregor and Buchanan not to try to ■ take advantage of the sweet innocenco of a young and blushing Prime Minister, even although ho wae originally up a haystack when politics was introduced on tho end of a pitchfork. Mr Massey has obligingly promised legislation to enable the Ihurana grazing runners to live on tho dreadful misery that they love so well. If he does he will have to bring it through the backdoor of Bellamy’s. It will never get through the front entrance.

THE GREATEST QUESTION OF ALL. The agitation for reserving to the community a reasonable share of the socially created value of land seems to be driving some of the “reform” organs to their wits' end in search of arguments to show that, the idea is (1) Based upon ignorance, and (2) will, if put into practice, spell ruin to the agriculturist. With the first .of these theories cur friends find themselves beset with very obvious difficulties and generally wind up with the admission that they are, of course, not opposed to “the proper taxation of land values”—in the same way 1 that they are “not opposed," we suspect, to the proper taxation of children's toys, of medicine, of clothing, of nearly all the articles in daily use by the community. To support the second contention the bogeys invented are fearful and wonderful, and appear to rest upon a belief that all the land in New Zealand is devoted to providing food for cows. A suggestion that there are no cows grazing in Wellington, for instance, would no doubt be regarded as irrelevant, yet it may interest our frenzied contemporaries to know that there ns a land question and a rent question and a labor question in Wellington, and that the land value in Wellington is twice as great as the value of all the rural land stretching from Pahiatna to Featherston and eastward to the sea. In trying to thoroughly alarm the unfortunate farmer about his cows the Dannevirke "News” has reached a great pitch of bathos. It solemnly tell* him that he must be on the alert because the next move will bo for the State, “after getting its hands on all values the farmer has not created,” to start making butter and cheese itself and put him to "drudge” at a living wage. This is a very callow stylo of controversy. The theory of the land reformer is, truly enough, to get at all values “not created” by the people who pocket them now. What we want to know is why this should not be done instead of “getting at” labor, industry and commerce by the present clumsy method? This is the question the "News” has to answer, and in doing so, apparently, it will have to quarrel with the president of the Farmers’ Union, who holds that all land values are "“hard earned” by the landowners*.