FLOOD OF PESSIMISM.

Wairarapa Age, 15 July 1931, Page 5

FLOOD OF PESSIMISM.

PREFERENCE FOB SEVENTY MILLIONS. LABOUR MEMBER’S TILT AT PREMIER. (By Telegraph.—“ The Age” Special.) WELLINGTON, July 14. Explanations of the economic slump were offered to the House of Representatives to-day by Mr. E. J. Howard (Christchurch South). He blamed the Reform Party for introducing into the Dominion 80,000 assisted immigrants since the previous slump of 1021, declaring that this accounted for the 40,000 unemployed, as these people had either displaced workers of were themselves out of work. Immigration should not have been allowed excepting under a systematic method of settlement on the land.

Mr. R. Semple: “They settled them all right.” Mr. Howard suggested that the late Sir Joseph Ward would have got the country more quickly out of the crisis. He believed that Sir Joseph saw what was cqming and planned ahead. Realising what would be the consequences of the Old Country returning to the gold standard, he mapped out a series of public works which would have kept money circulating and men in good work. He would have constructed the Gisborne-East Coast line, which above all others was justified, but the commercial man died and was succeeded by the farmer Prime Minister, with the farmer’s outlook—“If it rains for two days, it is a flood, and if it is fine for two days it is a drought.” (Laughter.) After the Parnell by-election, the Prime Minister let loose the flood of pessimism which caused everyone to tie up his pocket, and landed us in a mess. “But he is a nice type of chap,” added Mr Howard, with a smile. “I have worked with him for 12 years and all of us like him enough to lend him money. He is a good farmer, but with the farmer’s outlook.”