THE LABOUR PARTY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19446, 4 November 1925, Page 7

THE LABOUR PARTY

APPEAL TO ELECTORS. MR. HOLLAND’S MANIFESTO. [Per Press Association.] WESTPORT. Nov. 3. To-day Mr H. E. Holland, Leader of ithc Labour Party, issued the following imessage to the people of New Zealand: The political Labour movement, i which represents all who work with hand or brain, sounds its call for I solidarity at the ballot box. The Labour Party is the only party facing electors with a constructive policy making for political changes. Economic transformation will benefit as a whole the people who are engaged in the social services of the Dominion. The Liberal Party disappears as a serious factor and the line of demarcation is clearly drawn between Labour (standing for democracy and progress) and i Reform (standing for reactions of the worst phase of Conservatism). Reform [dishonours the signature of its own [leader to the Treaty of Versailles, I makes scraps of paper of pledges to 1 electorates, and bestows on the wealthy huge gifts in the form of reduced [taxes, while making immense reductions in the wages and salaries of pri- * vately employed workers and public, servants. Within a four years’ period ! it has reduced taxes to wealthy income taxpayers over eight million, and in th 3 same period has reduced wages . salaries well over ten millions. In [order to make gifts to the wealthy, it had to make public servants and wageworkers outside the service, pay dearly. Under Reform’s class legislation and [administration, the evil of land aggregation has been accentuated. The sum total of registered mortgages increased nearly 200 per cent. Rates of interest were lifted considerably. Bona fide working farmers have been driven off the land in large numbers. A free gift

of nearly two and a-half millions of public money was made to wealthy landowners who sold land to the Government for soldier settlers at a price far above real value, and additional heavy burdens have been imposed on small farmers and wage workers by means of an ever-increasing voluqie of indirect taxation. The legislation of the past thirteen years has operated, generally speaking, to advance the interests of owners, of big landholdings and finance monopolists who profiteer in money at the expense of every useful worker. Now the party that has cut such a wide swathe in the wages of workers during the past few years is forecasting future reduction. The issues involved in the present contest are all the questions of wages and working conditions. The Labour Party is the only possibly alternative Government to the present Tory party. Every element of industrialism and agrarian activity, every clement of progress and democracy must unite tomorrow to write victory on the banners of Labour, for as the people vote so must, they reap—cither laws written in narrow class interests by a handful who live by exploiting the needs of the people, or in legislation in line with the economic development and historical conditions of the country, and making for the benefit of the people as a whole.