THE RAISING OF THE LAND TAX AND THE FARMERS' UNION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12366, 30 May 1902, Page 3

THE RAISING OF THE LAND TAX AND THE FARMERS' UNION.

TO THE EDITOK. Silt,—Mr Mackenzie wants to know why, if Jam so friendly towards the Farmers' Union, 1 should have said that I would expose the

"National Asa." underneath its coter in all her hidcousness. It is just because I am a strong believer in a. real farmers' union, especially a small farmers' union, that I made this promise and performed this service for them. I know that some of our best Liberals are among the farmers—men who have always' been for progressive legislation. Knowing this, and also knowing something of the crowd who galvanised this so-called Farmers' Union into life, I said what I did.

No one knows better than Mr Mackenzie how that when last session the union held its first gathering at ralmerston North every opponent of tho policy and administration of the present Government went to it. This gathering took place on a Saturday, and when some of us saw every Tory fossil and reactionary politician in Parliament pouring down to the Manawatu railway station that morning wo thought that an Opposition barbecue had been arranged up the line, and it was only on making inquiry that we found that the dear old chaps were going to J'almcrston to help give a new organisation which was to be called a Farmers* Union (!) a lift.

It was well known up north that from Captain Russell downwards tho old Conservative crowd were holding office in it and directing its movements. Then look for an instant at its manifestoes and programmes: the demand that the little freehold now left to the colony shall be sold right out; the insistence on no interferene.'? between employer and employed—in otlier words, the break up of all our labour and factory laws on which wc pride ourselves;—the 'neverending girding ot all labour unions, and especially at a. Government which has dared to put mi a land tax. These, Sir, are the marks of the beast, and no sophistry can obliterate them. In view of these facts. 1 made the promise which I did make, and I fulfilled that promise at Ashburton last Dreenibcr. Since (hen the demands made ami the throats uttered by the union have been a good deal milder in tone. •

Mr Mackenzie says that for me to promise to show tho defunct "National Ass." in all her hidcousncss underneath the cloak of the Farmers' Union is equivalent to saying that a fanners' union is hideous. There is not the slightest similarity. For instance, if I say that I will show that a mail calling himself a Christian is a fraud, that, does not mean that Christianity is a fraud, but that the individual calling himself one Is. Mr Mackenzie ends with a bleat about my " permitting the farmers to know how to voice their own wishes"—in other words, to havo their own union.

There is not a man in New Zealand more anxious to see a good fanners' union than myself. Why should not tlio producer have his union as well 03 the artisan nr tho distributor? It is wanted in the one cam as much us in tho others. But when one taw an organisation started as this ono was, and heard it calling itself what it was not, read of its resolutions and demands—resolutions and demands not to benefit those it was supposed to help, hut to iir.ure others—and knew that behind this stalking horse were tho guns of the old Tory crowd, ready to produce the same mischiof in our country sz used to bo in it, th?n I beljcvcj i( to bb my auty to say aod ilo iiMt I did.

I When I como to Duncdin 7 am certain that I will get- tho same vcrdiet from an Otago audience as I got front ;i Canterbury one.—l am, etc., CiKOIIOE J.At'IIE.SVOW Lyttelton, May 23.