THE TORY VIEW OF STATE CONTROL.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 12942, 6 December 1909, Page 4

THE TORY VIEW OF STATE CONTROL.

When the average Tory sets out to do a thing, his opponents nearly always make one grievous mistake. They almost invariably forget hia facile manner of doing the thing he says he will never under any circumstances do. Aud when they do happen to remark upon the fact, they forget the ease with which be will at once proceed to prove that he is not really doing the thing he denounced, but something different. When the Newcastle strikers suggested that the coal mines should be nationalised, the Tory members of the Parliament sitting in Sydney raised a howl against the proposal that could almost have been heard at Newcastle itself. Then they dcribively pointed to the strike in the New Zealand State coal mine as a convincing reason why the State of New South Wales should on no account do any trading in coal. Now, a few days after, the New South Wales Government proposes to step in and take all the coal it can lay its hands on — not, be it remarked, for its own use alone, but for 'he community as well. The New South T 'ties Government is Tory to the backhotv?, which probably accounts for its belief that State action is quite wrong to-day, tut quite right to-morrow. Probably, iiowever, it will say that the two things are different. It reminds one of Mr Misss'y denouncing State ownership of iaiid, out quite forgetting to denounce State •iwntrship of railways.