WHAT TORYISM MEANS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8806, 8 August 1914, Page 2

WHAT TORYISM MEANS

TUB ARTIFICIAL MANUFACTURE OF WAGE SLAVES. To the Editor “N.Z. Times/’ ■ Sir, —If once the people of New Zealand realise what, Toryism, that is to eay Massey ism, really means, the present Massey Minority Ministry will get a very short shrift at the forthcoming general elections. Reduced to its, lowest terras, Toryism, or Maaseyism, means the exploitation of the many by the few, the exploitation of the masses by the Masooys. And, since in, a country where adult suffrage obtains tho many can always outvote'the few, tho aim of tho Masseys ia necessarily (1) to deceive tho masses by subsidising a biased press and (2) to so fako tho electoral' system that a one-third minority in the country may held a majority of seats in Parliament, and keep in its pro-monopolist hands the reins of government. Accordingly we find that the present Government have abolished the second ballot without pntdng in its place, as tho Hon. James Alien distinctly declared*, they ought, either tho preferential vote or proportional representation. The first New Zealand Tory, the. typical New Zealand Tory, was and is undoubtedly Edward Gibbon Wakefield, “that observant economist and cold-blooded Philistine/’ as Max Hirseh calls him in Ins “Democracy versus Socialism.” Coming out to Australasia, Wakefield found the laud so free that the people also were free, land go cheap that labour was,., from the point of view of the would-be exploiters —the Tories, the Maf spy ices of that day—-unconscionably dear; and he d-d' not rest till he had made the land dear and labour cheap, till by means of land monopoly he had artificially manufactured wage slaves for the benefit of tho exploiters. This is shown in detail in the final chapter of “Capital,” which Karl Marx, the great German Socialist writer, devotes to an exposition of Wakefield’s “Modern Theory of Colonisation ” “It is tho great merit of E. G. Wakefield,” says Marx, “to have discovert, not anything now about the colonies, but to have discovered in tho colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in tho Mother Country. As the system of protection in its origin attempted to manufacture capitalists artificially in the Mother Country', so Wakefield’s colonisation theory . . . attempted to effect the manufacture of wage-work-ers in the colonies.”

Describing the economic position of Australia and New Zealand as ho found it, Wakefield, complained, ‘•When land is very cheap and all men are free, where everyone who pleases can easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not ■ only ia labour very dear . . . but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour' at any price.” And to remedy this, to him very undesirable state of affairs, Wakefield recommended that the Government should, aa Karl Marx summarises it; “pub upon the virgin soil an artificial price . . . that compels tho immigrant to work for a long time for wages before he can earn enough money to buy land and turn himself into an independent peasant. The funds resulting from the sale of land at a price relatively prohibitory for the wageworkers, this fund of money extortedfrom tho wages of labour, ... the Government i« to employ . . . to import have-nothings from Europe nuo, tho colonies, and thug keep the wagelabour market full for tho capitalists. . . . By this plan, Wakefield cries m triumph, ‘the supply of labour must be constant and regular,, because, first, as no labour would be able to procure land until he had worked for money, all immigrant labourers, working for a time for wages and in combination, would produce ■ capital for the employment of mor* labourers; secondly, because every labourer whd left oif working for wages and became a landowner would, by purchasing land, provide a fund for bringing fresh labour to the colony.’ The price of tho soil imposed by the State (adds Marx) most, of course, 1m a ‘sufficient price,’

i. 0., so high ‘as to prevent the labourers from becoming independent landowners until others had followed to take their place.’ ” How well this advice was followed and how successful the Wakefield plan proved in making land dear and labour cheap is known to all who remember the soup kitchens, the sweating system, and so forth, which marked the closing years of the Continuous Tory Ministry of 1879 to 1890. Then came the advent of the Liberal party to power, the Ballance-Grey land tax of 1891, and upwards of twenty years of progress and prosperity. But, unhappily, in its later years the Liberal party did not press forward as it ought to have done on the lines laid down by Ballauco and Grey. They failed in 1911 to give the needful “Lloyd George touch” and to, carry proportional representation. By a series of electoral ffukes,, and by the “ratting” of four Liberal members, the Tories again got into power; and, unquestionably, unless the electors send them to the right-about in November nest, tbev will, by following—aye, and even better lug—the Wakefield plan (even Wakefield did not daro to propose the importation of six-foot, thirteen stone, sevon-aud-sispeimy “boys”!) bring about oueo more a happy Tory ora of soup kitchens and sweating. Lot the progressive forces of New Zealand, therefore, sea to it. Let them avoid the splitting of tho progressive electoral forces, and outvote tho Tories, tho Masseyites, as they can, if they will, by two to one.—L am, etC ' ARTHUR 'WITHY. Goldie’s Brae