LABOUR’S METHODS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19439, 27 October 1925, Page 6

LABOUR’S METHODS.

It was very kind of Mr. Peter Eraser, one of the stalwarts of the Labour Party, to visit Wanganui yesterday and give us a description of the Prime Minister as “an ordinary mediocre, individual” and to place Mr. Coates on the same level as himself. Not having heard Mr. Fraser, some people might have been inclined to believe him. Having seen and heard Mr. Fraser, they

will have no doubts as to the worthlessnes of his opinion on this subject. He will probably find that his effort, to belittle Mr. Coates—a good soldier, as one of the audience very pointedly remarked—has not done much to help Labour. Nor has Mr. Fraser added anything to his party’s prestige by his exposition of its land policy. In common with other Labour speakers, Mr. Fraser has tried to dress the land policy in a guise in which it may delude the electors; and he-has failed. The plain truth is that the “usehold” policy means confiscation and loss of ownership. Tlve Labour speakers make much of the promise that, the owners of land would be permitted retain an “interest” in it if Labour’s policy were in force, but the “interest” would not. be ownership. The “interest.” it is clear, would not extend to any increase in the value of the “owner’s” property. In the Labour view all such increases are robberies, and are to be confiscated as such by the State.. It is useless for the authors of the policy to shuffle and squirm in the hope of somehow getting through the awkward weeks of a general election. Whatever may be the success of such tactics with the city worker, the farmer at least cannot afford to be blinded, and he will not be. Mr. Fraser and his friends are merely deluding themselves with the idea that they are deceiving the people.