DR FINDLAY'S ADDRESS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13894, 4 May 1907, Page 141

DR FINDLAY'S ADDRESS.

Sir,—l liavo not (lie slightest- doubt about the Hon. Dr Findlay being one of tho most, liberal and well-meaning of men, but 1 fail to grasp his method of reasoning, which seems to 1110 to bj at variance with the Prime Minister's utterances on •tho subject. Sir Joseph Ward, speaking j on tho Financial Statement last session, said: " I would like to ask how many hon. members are prepared to continue obtaining loans year after year in order to carry 011 the land for settlements 011 the present system? There is not a member of the llouso who. rea-lising his responsibility, will contradict me when I affirm that it would be impossible Tor the rolo'iy to go on borrowing and spending £750.000 a year by the issue of debentures in order to acquire fresh land for set;lement. Wirh four millions and'a-half sterling already invested in land, ... I a<;k, are we to go on liuildui'/ up the public debt at the rate of £750,000 a year and building up a debt of perhaps 10 or 15 millions sterling ■luring the next 10 or 20 years in buying lands for .settlement? Tho position is an impossible one." Vet the Attorney-general declares: "The Government, however, would continue to purchase under the Land for Settlements Act. Good work remains to bo done in iliat way." This is Dr Findlay'6 argument after having told his bearers: "l'he State had hud to pay too much for a great part of the land taken under the Land for Settlements Act. When depression came, ns come it must some day, he supposed either the Crown tenant- would have to pay more rent or else ho must go and ask the State to take tho burden from him." More astounding reasoning it would be difficult to find. Dr Findlay must surely know that when depression conic« it is impossible for a tenant to pay higher rent, and nothing is more oerta.in than that the loss will fall upon tho State. Further, Dr Fimllr-y must be aware that the land question and the wage question are identically one and the same question, because all increases in land values arise from the rise in prices, which could not possibly have taken place until there had been a general increase in the workers' wages to enable them to pay it. It- is the rise in prices of the necessaries of life .whjch constiiuto 1110 crux of tho labour problem, because by the riso in prices tho workers lose the advantage which an increased wage ought to give them, and this loss becomes the landowners' guin. But for this riso. then, it- is easy to see that- for every increase in wages tho worketv. would become correspondingly bettor oft' and there would be no wage question to solve. Rut, if no rise in prioes takes place, neither could any rise in land value take place, because the rise in value of all lands is solely dependent upon a rise in prices. The two questions are therefore rvu to bo indisfiolubly joined together, and it becomes obvious that a solution of the one also becomes a solution of the other. Now, with the utmost stroke of fancy I believe that the Attorney-general will not venturo to claim that the Land Bill will also solve the wage question, yet, as we have seen, if it is to solve the land question it- must also solve the wwe question. It is, of course, easy to delude the electors, ft'ho have no spccial knowledge of economic science, and consequently things only according to how t-hev agree with their sentiments. Rut- 1 would remind them that when the Liberal party in 1892 placed the M'Kenzie Act on tho Statute Book exactly the same argument was used for that measure aa is used to-day in favour of a bill that, is to repeal the nuin provisions of the M'Kenzie Act. ihe M'Kenzie Act, as wo all know, was a measure to ::-olve the land question. Had it done so, it is needless to say there would bo no necessity for the present Land Bill. How. then, do wo know that the present bill is any more of a solution than the il'Ktnzic Art?. .Clearly, so far as tho

doctors arc concerned, tlicy know no moro about the one than Ihe other, but Ministers might bo more frank with the people, and none, knows lietter than the Attorncygoneral that so long as the land appropriates tie workers' earnings £o long will ■the 12.11 a fjucstion remain unsolved.—•[ am, etc., W. Sivertsex.