Rangitikei Advocate. MONDAY, APRIL 29, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8799, 29 April 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. MONDAY, APRIL 29, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

ALL the distinguished visitors to this country, and many who have no particular claims to distinction, feel it their duty to fill columns of our journals with the impressions they have gathered during their tours. For the most part these effusions are of a laudatory character, but none the less they are generally of a notably inaccurate nature. This would not bo of much importance if their reports only appeared here, but unfortunately many' of our visitors publish accounts of their visit to Now Zealand in English papers, and disseminate incorrect ideas in a country where they are accepted as gospel. Wo recently came across some remarks in a hook entitled “The Pattern Nation,” which seem to give a very accurate idea of the social conditions of this country, though so far as wo are aware the writer, Sir Henry Wrixon, K.O. ,|has never visited New Zealand. We quota the following: “In some of the dependencies of Britain, as, for example, in Now Zealand, a cheering spectacle is certainly presented to mankind. There the people do indeed rule, and all enjoy au easy life, but they are only a handful of well-to-do settlors, f ull of industrial energy, surrounded by fertile lands that could support millions, blessed by all the natural conditions of plenty, with no standing armies or costly establishments to maintain, spending freely on wages to labour a vast revenue, raised by high taxation both of property and imports, and by profuse loans from abroad. The Socialist Party do there indeed promulgate. their views with the same vehemence as they do in Europe ; and a few of the more harmless of them are partially accepted. But the people are too well off to think seriously of the real thing. The mass of poverty and the constant struggle for bread, which load up to social revolutoin iu old crowded nations, arc wanting there. The few years of the early experience of this young happy community can afford no light to the nations of Europe. It is iu the old world, not the now, that tiro crisis will come. You might as well measure by the needs V.f a hoy at school what his wants would ho when a full-grown man, fighting his way in the world and having a family to provide for.”

WE are all familiar with the ordinary socialistic programme, which includes, among other items, State boot factories, clothing factories, steamships, and so forth, but in our general condemnation of tire whole scheme for the extension of the activity of the Government we may easily fail to note one curious omission in the nearly all-embracing plans of the Socialists. So far as we are aware no recognised socialist programme has ever proposed to include farming among the other businesses which should be undertaken by the State. We admit that many countries have State farms, but those are more- of the nature of purely experimental stations than of money-making businesses. A splendid case for State farming could be made

out by socialists from their own point of view. “It is, ” they might say, “of tiie first importance to a country that its lauds should bo put to the best use, should be cultivated in the best manner, and so should supply as much food as possible to the people. Some people have not enough capital to enable them to put their land to the best use; some men with capital do not know how to use it; some men intentionally put it to unprofitable use. The State, by the wise direction of common operations, by the use of best machinery, by not needing rent or profit could undoubtedly carry on a system of farming better for the people than they can individually farm for themselyos. ” We defy anyone to prove that these arguments are not just as-effective as those used to support State coal mines, State boot factories, and the other State departments recommended by the Trades and Labour Councils. It is not by accident that State farming lias been left out of the programme, it is simply because our Fists do not really believe their own is: I. If any business is profitable it is called a monopoly and taken over by the State, but the more difficult and uncertain industries such as agriculture are to be loft to private enterprise with the understanding that profits can always be minimised by taxation.