MR. SEMPLE’S MISSION

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1934, Page 3

MR. SEMPLE’S MISSION

AIM OF HIS CAMPAIGN. CONTROL OF THE CURRENCY. A man-made, finished product of a selfish system manipulated and controlled by selfish men with no regard to the welfare and happiness of the great majority of the people in New Zealand and in any other country of the world stricken with the ' economic blizzard! That was how Mr. R. Semple, M.P., at Waitara on Saturday night described the present economic depression. In the words of the chairman, Mr. S. Flood, Mr. Semple delivered Labour’s message to Waitara. The orthodox politician and those of like views in other sections of the community affirmed, said Mr. Semple, that the crisis was one over which man had no control; that it had sneaked upon them like a thief in the dark, and that the only thing to do was to impose more and more taxes, and when this had been carried to the dizzy limit to sit down, and see what happened in other parts of’ the world. The Prime Minister had told the country that the Government could do nothing, that the ramifications of the calamity were beyond any Government, Mr. Semple alleged. There were 70,000 unemployed and their dependents in New Zealand. If the boys and girls who could be, should be and wanted to be working were included the number could be placed at 150,000. The unemployed, and their dependents were living in a state of semi-stervation. The world’s leading mathematicians estimated that there were betwen 35,000,000 and 40,000,000 unemployed in the world, and this number with dependents could safely be trebled. The tragedy of it all, Mr. Semple went on, was that the people who were doing some kind of useful work—the business man struggling to keep his business going, the farmer to keep the mortgagee away—were taxed to an insufferable degree to keep 70,000 men and their dependents in a state of semi-starvation. They were taxed to the extent of £4,000,000 a year plus the exchange, which was a>, class tax, of £12,000,000, making a total ’tif £16,000,000 in direct tax. Ninety to ninety-five per cent, of the £4,000,000 extracted from the people’s pockets was wasted, and in the process of wasting humiliated and degraded the men to whom the pittance was handed. It created no asset but a liability which would be paid for by posterity. The results could be seen in England, Mr. Semple affirmed, where there were grey-headed men who had never had a job. When the recent recruiting for the army was conducted there, according to Press cables, 75 per cent, of the men, representing the young manhood of the country, were rejected as unfit even for “cannon fodder.” When trouble came and physical and mental stability were needed they would be calling upon wrecked men to protect the nation which had wrecked them. The greatness of a nation depended upon the greatness of its people, and this in turn depended upon the economic and social conditions under which people lived. The great philospher Victor Hugo had said that poverty was the demon of dissension, that it brought strife to the democracy of the fireside, that where it came in the door love flew out the window. He had made his appeals in Parliament and in his last speech had told the House that it was of no use appealing to the servants of the bank usurers. He was going touring the Dominion giving his message to the people, and he would continue on the trail until the present gang was “beaten into the backwash of political oblivion,” said Mr. Semple. A vote of thanks and confidence in the Labour Party was carried by acclamation. There was a fair attendance.