LABOUR’S BESETTING SIN

Southland Times, Issue 20173, 9 May 1927, Page 5

LABOUR’S BESETTING SIN

EXTRAVAGANT LANGUAGE. (Contributed by Taxpayer.) Either as a private individual or as the leader of a political party Mr H. E. Holland is free to entertain just what views he pleases concerning the morals and methods of the business men who direct the trading operations of the Dominion. But when from a public platform he proceeds to cast shameful aspersions upon the mercantile community, without a tittle of evidence to justify his words, he is grossly abusing the uses of free speech and legitimate comment. To show that Mr Holland has offended grievously in this respect it is not necessary to recall passages from his impassioned speeches on the hustings and in Parliament, where extravagant language is all too readily condoned. It will suffice to quote two or three sentences from the Press Association’s summary of his recent studied address at Wanganui. THE INDICTMENT. “Vested interests,” Mr Holland said, “naturally fought co-operative marketing, because they realised that such marketing would deprive them of the opportunity of exploiting both the producers here and the consumers at Home.” “The trouble which followed the institution of control was the result of storing supplies previous to control and of the gambling methods of speculative interests.” “All communications so far made available to the public reveal the New Zealand Government was behind Mr Paterson in his attitude of hostility to control and the London management.” “What Mr Paterson was then doing was approved, notwithstanding the fact that his conduct could only result to the detriment of New Zealand producers.” “It was imperative that marketing should be conducted on lines that would eliminate all the elements which gamble in the people’s food.” COMMERCIAL MORALITY. The purpose of this protest is not to reiterate what already has been said in regard to “absolute control,” a subject worn almost threadbare. The high standard of commercial morality maintained by the business men of this country, however, is such a valuable national asset that it is doubly deplorable to find a public man of Mr Holland's parts attempting to smirch it merely with the object of advancing his own political creed among careless people who have taken no trouble to make themselves acquainted with even the rudimentary .acts. VESTED INTERESTS. It is simply a perversion of the truth for Mr Holland to say that “vested interests”— meaning, of course, the merchants and agents—have fought co-operative marketing. The misrepresentation is aggravated by the addendum asserting that the merchants and agents “fought co-operative marketing because they realise such marketing would deprive them of the opportunity of exploiting both the producer here and the consumer at Home.” They have raised no objection whatever to co-operative marketing, nor have they discouraged it in any shape or form. Co-operative production and co-operative marketing have been outstanding features of the dairy industry in the Dominion since it was first instituted. Co-operative factories outnumber the proprietary factories by fully ten to one. It is therefore simply ludicrous for Mr Holland to talk of the merchants and agents fighting co-operative marketing. As a matter of fact the very reverse has been the case, the efforts of the merchants and agents being directed towards securing the business of the co-operative factories by offering them the best possible terms. Exploitation in the circumstances would have been the very last expedient they would have employed. The first count in Mr Holland’s indictment, to put it mildly, is simply a figment of his own fruitful imagination. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. Mr Holland’s attempt to saddle the trouble which followed upon the institution of control on the shoulders of “the gambling methods of speculative interests”— meaning again the merchants and agents—is scarcely less unhappy. It was the advocates of “absolute control” that wanted to take charge of the market; fix prices and make the British consumers dependent upon the whims of the Dairy Board and the judgment of its representatives in London. Of course it is easy enough now to say that had a majority of the members of the board stood firmly by the chairman in his attempt to extract more from the British public, the British public would have approached the London Agency as suppliants for butter at any price that seemed good to Mr Grounds and his colleagues. But the probabilities seem to have been all against such a development, and in any case the merchants and agents in New Zealand were not responsible for what actually happened. They had to share, however, in whatever losses were occasioned by the board’s attempt to hold up the market. THE PEOPLE’S FOOD. Finally Mr Paterson, the Government’s representative on the London Agency, is held responsible for all the ills that have befallen the producers. He allowed the , Government, according to Mr Holland’s statement, to stand behind him in his hostility to control and the London management, and in his effort to save the producers from what he conceived to be an approaching catastrophe. These do not appear in the eyes of the onlooker to be very grave lapses, since the poor man had no means of preventing the Government agreeing with him; but if they really were grievous offences surely it is the Prime Minister and his colleagues that should be called to account. Mr Holland’s suggestion that it is the malign influence of the merchants and agents that prevents the elimination of “all the elements which gamble in the people’s food” betrays a curious ignorance of the practical things of life. The seed time and | harvest, the weather and the crops, the inexorable law of supply and demand are the chief gamblers in the people’s food and these are not yet under the control of man. A DEPLORABLE DISSERVICE. No one wishes to quarrel with Mr Holland over any one of the many panaceas by which he would banish all the ills that beset humanity in this world and the next. The leader of the Labour Party serves many I useful purposes. He keeps the political ; conscience of the country awake; he holds fast to the faith of his party in the honest belief that one day it will move mountains; he fans the embers of discontent in the hope that they will break forth into the flame of beneficent achievement, and, according to his lights, he gives of his’best to his constituents and to the country. But his efforts and his achievements all are sullied by his extravagant speech, by hig disregard, on occasions, of the amenities of public life, and, above all, by his reiteration of charges he knows to be unfounded. His repeated attacks upon the commercial morality of this country is a deplorable disservice to the whole community.