Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1914.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11003, 25 July 1914, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1914.

IT might be guessed from knowledge of Mr Payne’s brief po 1 itical career that if there is a legislative erndeity needing a sponsor he would be the very man to undertake the office for it. Such a thing Is his “Eight to Work” Bill. It provides that “every worker in the Dominion of New Zealand, and who has been resident therein not less than six months shall have the right to work

“Right To Work.”

and to receive a minimum living wage for his or her services.” As a bare statement of a humanitarian proposition there is not much fault to be found with it. But as he shirks the cardinal difficulty of explaining who is to provide work, and where, we are left to draw our own inferences. The Government could not undertake to provide employment for all trades, so it is co be presumed that any one of the proprietors of rights could walk on to anybody’s premises, laud or shop and set to on any unnecessary thing and draw his wages from unwilling purses. At present the Bill is a superergation of philanthropy. There are hundreds of men now in the cities clamouring for work, who refuse to go into the country whore what they profess to want waits them. Mr Payne should legislate for for tnem. “Right To Loaf” might be his next effort in the legislative line.

A CONTEMPORARY, writing of

the recent To Restain Them. political tur-

moil in the House attempted to advise Sir Joseph Ward to restrain his followers, but an inspired comp, converted the ad' vice into an admonition to fsstain them. The counsel, though not what was originally intended, was apt and reasonable, if it is true, as alleged, that there exists an alliance between the Liberals and the Red Federation. What may have been the general colour scheme of the Liberal Party previous to the mixture of the blazing hue of the Reds iimiiug its way into it we do not know. It might have been bistre, ochre, sepia or Vandj’ke brown, fuscous, chocolate, maroon or foxy. It was, of course, a pigmentation derived from its opinions, and was fairly loud and conspicuous. But with such splashes of vivid red mixed into it its colour has become very loud indeed. Natural history tells us that the bright pigmentation of some of the more brilliantly

coloured of the animal kingdom is due to the secretion of bile. Can it be that the law holds good with the human kind?

THE revival-of the agitation for the

construction of the A Buzzing. missing links of

the Marton-Lftvin railway has set Palmerston buzzing like a hive of angry bees. There are mutual invitations on the part of those who assume special charge

of the interests of the town to gird up their loins for a supreme effort in the way of log-rolling that will jjreveut such a dreadful assault upon the prosperity of Palmerston as is implied in giving another great district such facilities as they themselves possess. To read their angry protests any one not conversant with the position would certainly think that it was intended to pull up the rails between Greatford and Levin on the present line, so as to leave Palmerston entirely without railway facilities. But there is no hostility to Palmerston and no controversy with it intended by the promoters of the project. The sole objects are to save an hour in the monotonous railway ' journey to Wellington, thousands of pounds in freight annually to people to the north of Feildiug, and to bestow railway facilities on a large and fertile district which now is without them. If the construction of the line should result in less congestion of trains at Palmerston that is a consideration that should cause more pleasure than pain to Palmerston people.

THE signs and wonders that are to he the prePolitical Portent. cursors of the end of all things eventuated in the Parliamentary Buildings the other night when {Sir Joseph Ward and Mr Massey walked into the “Aye” lobby 7 together on the second reading of the Licensing Bill. Whether they went in snarling at each other in the usual way, or arm

in arm, with countenances wreathed in smile?, we are not told. If the fact is not to be accepted as a portent of woe it may be taiiiU that there can still be something in common besides their humanity in a fine old crusted Tory, such as Mr Massey is represented in the Liberal Camp to be, and the iconoclastic and destructive Sir Joseph Ward, as he is regarded by the extreme wing of the Reformers. It indicates indeed, that there is no such thing as a great political fault line of fracture running through communities of men, sharply dividing them into two absolutely divergent and immutable schools of thought. The community has more political colours and shades in its opinion than there were in Joseph’s coat, and each individual, except in regard to one or two principles that form the nucleus .of his faith, is subject to ebb and flow of

opinion on most of the ocher elements of his political persuasion.