Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1905. FORTY YEARS AGO!

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8036, 7 January 1905, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1905. FORTY YEARS AGO!

• " It is positively melancholy to read in the columns of a newspaper (writes the Wairarapa Leader) the report of speeches made by men who have lived into the twentieth century, but who are not of it. These men would go back to the " good old times " ; they would live over again the slavery of forty years ago; they would refuse to accept progress of any sort, either social or political. And when these men are absolutely left without a shred of argument, they turn and abuse men who are trying to live up to higher ideals." We, ourselves, lived and worked in this Colony forty years ago, and have a fairly distinct recollection of how men lived and worked in that unprogressive era ; but we positively fail to remember " the slavery " referred to by our contemporary. Perhaps, he can give us chapter and verse for it; otherwise, we must put his assertion down as a myth evolved from the imagination of a gifted writer, who was not, at the time referred to, an ornament and an inspiration to New Zealand. Men accepted progress forty years ago much the same as they do now. They also had ideals which were sufficiently high. We know, for example, one man who lived at that period on forty acres of land, which was unimproved and mortgaged. His ideal was to clear the land and clear the mortgage, and he did both. He worked on the roads, earning six shillings per day; and on a moonlight night one could hear the ring of his axe felling the bush on his section. He worked hard and he worked long hours, but he had his reward in a free house, a * free section, and enough stock upon it to keep him in his old age. Making an independence for oneself is not slavery ; and this is what we saw men doing forty years ago.. Many of them are still alive and remarkably well to do. Forty years ago, then as now, some men liked an easy life and took one; others submitted to a hard life and lived

it. The former lived and died poor men, but the latter and their descendants are the men of substance of to day in New Zealand. We see no higher ideals to day, than these we witnessed forty years ago. On the contrary, lower ones are very much in evidence. The young man of forty years ago was less addicted to either racing or gambling or drinking than the young man of to-day. He lived a simpler and, on the whole, a nobler life than that which is now apparent. New Zealand was a pleasanter country to live in forty years ago. The professional politician and the professional worker (the man who does not work) had not then taken possession of the land.

Possibly our contemporary may be able to define the higher ideals to which he refers. Forty years ago, in his own town, Carterton, houses were a little primitive in construction and somewhat resembled whares; fences and paddocks were also somewhat rough. Still each man lived on his own freehold and enjoyed a fair amount of material comfort, combined with a good prospect of ultimate independence. Is the condition of the worker there better now than it was then, and are his ideals in any respect higher and nobler? We doubt it, for although there existed some bracing asperities in colonial life forty years ago, every man was a free man, a lightly taxed man and carried a Field Marshall's baton in his knapsack.