CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 173, 1 November 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

DOMINATED BY A CLASS . in order to appreciate the evils of domination hv anv one class it is interesting to notice that Austria is at the beck and call of the agrarians, and it is not difficult to foresee in the near future a physical protest against a policy ilmt has the effect of starving the people. i There was a wild rush in Vienna lately i to purchase Australian meat at Is lOd ' a ])ound. The agrarian Leader, Yon ITohenblum, according to a paper recently circulated in Austria, said that if the people did not like to pay the price demanded for milk by the agrarians, they could drink water. That is to say. infant Austrians can die as fast as they

like as far as M. Hohcnblum and his fellow landholders a'rc concerned. The pamphlet referred to mentions that Austria has reached such a position that her supplies of cattle are well nigh decimated, and what is needed for home consumption has to be paid for at terribly high prices. Not only has the price of meat risen, but the price of other agricultural produce has increased so inordinately that there is everywhere a distinct " under-feeding of the people. .Government and Parliament ignore the tieeds of the people, thinking only of the incomes of the 17,000 large landowners. Nay, even worse, for during the last forty years the total taxation of the people".has trebled or quadrupled, but the land tax upon the great landlords has been reduced from 07 to 53 million kroner.' The Government of Austria has actually granted the land-owning class subsidies and concessions which amount to more than the total amount of the land tax. It will be interesting to notice whether the agrarians of Austria will permit other shipments of meat than the trial one to reach the country and to observe what attitude a hungry populace will assume if the dominating class refuses food.

THE AGONIES OF THE RICH. We have been treated lately to distressins news items about the dreadful hardships the millionaire landholders of Britain are subjected to by the Budget, and many are selling portions of their estates. But this phase is not so extraordinary as the utterly ridiculous protests and querulous whines of some of the "landed gentry." The chief reason for grumbling among some territorial peers seems to be that they will have to 'work to fill in the land tax returns. Nothing that has been written for a long, time is quite as ridiculous as a recent letter from Lord Mount Edgecumbe to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a copy of which the childish nobleman sent to the Times. The noble peer has so much land that he will have to be given one thousand copies of a certain form for filling in. Here is his wail:—"As I have to sign all these, I must satisfy myself as to their being correctly filled up. In every case I have to inspect the lease or tenancy agreement; in many cases the title deeds will have to be investigated, and many will also entail correspondence, visiting distant places, and the clearing up of legal conundrums." This recalls the famous declaration of a peer last year that the torments of the Budget would drive him to suicide, if it were not for the thought of the death-duties. The heart bleeds for a millionaire who has to sit down for a day or two to do the mechanical work of a mere.clerk. The millionaire would snort with derision if a person who had to do no writing simply because he had no land were to write to the Times from his point of view. But there is not the least possibility that the Times would print his letter.

TARANAKI'S "BLACK DEATH." A local farmer, who was a statistician before the cow lured him to the land, in conversation with a "News" man, said he computed that the blackberry was eating up Taranaki revenue at the rate of a great many thousand pounds per annum. He vigorafjsly declared that the' iniquities of exchange jmortgages, false values and tuberculosis could not be compared for virulence to the blackberry. He further mentioned that "we town people" don't understand the extent of the devastation, that the Government doesn't care, and that a few politicians ought to be dragged face downwards across his farm—the cleanest in the district—to draw their attention to the matter. The settler snorted with derision when a meek reporter told him that blackberry blight would also kill related berries and asked in tones of thunder what a few raspberries or any other kind of berries mattered to the greatest New Zealand industry. "Does the raspberry bring in a fraction of the profit that the cow does ?" he demanded. "I don't care if the blight kills every fruit tree in Taranaki as long as it kill's every blackberry. Take my tip for it, if the blackberry isn't put into its grave pretty soon the dairying industry will be decently interred. Ploughing be'hanged! Everything spreads it. To the land it is what the plague is to humanity—the black death. I tell you, old man, we've got to stop poking blackberry with grubbers and scythes and ploughs and hit it with its natural enemy—the blight."