A CAPITALIST?

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 63, 19 March 1935, Page 3

A CAPITALIST?

Labour Stalwart WHO OWNS MUCH PROPERTY LOYALTY TO LANG PARTY ♦ SYDNEY, February 13. Parkes, a country town which lies about 280 miles west of Sydney, on the way towards Broken Hill, is the home town of the M’Girr famdy. Of the three brothers M’Girr, James is one of the leaders of the Langites and he stands so high In their esteem that, keeping an eye on the possibility of Lang’s retirement from politics, many people look upon “Jimmy’’ as the natural heir and successor to “the Big Fellow.” However, I am concerned just now with the second M’Girr (J. J. G.,popularly known as “Greg’’). It was at Parkes that “Greg” M’Girr started in life as a chemist, and Parkes is still the centre of his chief activities. Before 1920 he was Labour member for Yass, and then for Cootamui'.dra, and he was later a Labour Minister for Health and for Labour.

Before Lang was removed from office he appointed “Greg” M’Girr to the Western Lands Board, but M ’Girr has since suffered the fate of most commoners and delegates dating from the Lang regime and he has been dismissed from office. However, having grown up in the West and seen it grow with him from boyhood, he has taken full advantage of his opportunities, and now he has his reward. All the M’Girr’s are rich, but “Greg” is reputedly the wealthiest of them all, and it would be interesting, if it were possible, to compare his possessions with the assets of some of our best-known plutocrats.

He has just taken up a large block of land in the main street of Cooramble and intends to build there a hotel and a number of shops. In Parkes he has a hotel and 40 shops; in Forbes he has three hotels and 20 shops; at Orange ho has 10 shops and a hotel; at Lake Cargellico ho has eight shops and has just built a hotel at a cost of £20,000; at Condobolm he has £ix shops and a hotel —and so the list goes on. In short, between the Queensland border and the South-Wpst “Greg” M ’Girr owns about 300 shops and 30 hotels, scattered through 30 different towns. He admits that “he doesn’t know where he is not” in the West, and he travels about 1000 miles by car every week to inspect his holdings and to watch the growth of the many towns inr which he is financially interested. No doubt great credit is due to him for his persistent accumulation of property and for the shrewdness which has enabled him to enrich himself whore many others have failed. “Greg” M’Girr is a product of the West and he believes in it and its destiny.

Believes in Country “I am a native of the back country,” he told an interviewer the other day, “and I think that the future of Australia depends on the country towns, their farming and grazing areas and their industries. There, I consider, is scope for the most successful form of speculation and enterprise. To prove my contention, I say that the towns wherein my interests lie came out of the depression 18 months before Sydney lifted its head.” Right through the West, he maintains, there is an atmosphere of prosperity, in all the towns building Is active, and he thinks that a visit to these centres should be of tremendous educational value to anyone in Australia.

All this is very interesting, but. it raises at least one question to which it might be difficult to find a satisfactory answer. Mr “Greg’ M’Girr like his brother “Jimmie” on a smaller scale—has made a great deal of money by buying up properties and estates “laying house to house and field to field” —after the accepted tradition of the “capitalist” whom Mr .T. T. Lang so fluently denounces and execrates. Yet the M’Girrs are still regarded as loyal adherents of Lang and faithful exponents of the one and only true gospel of Labour. I wonder why?— Special correspondent to the “Christchurch Star.”