BURNING QUESTIONS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 2826, 23 August 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

BURNING QUESTIONS.

TO THE KIMTOIt. 3rn, —In looking over tint part of your )aper devoted to correspondents, docs it 3ver occur to your readers how paradoxical ind incongruous they appear. Oij one column we see Mr Win. Arch. Murray showing that farmers cannot sell their produce at a profit, and showing that even in America, with a population ot seventy million, and a surplus revenue of twenty millions, and near the old world's markets, there is great agricultural distress ; in the next column a person writes strongly advocating, without rhyme or reason, that the farmers in New Zealand should be made to pay the wholo taxes, when, the inoitagee who may hold the farmer in thraldom, the banker, the butcher, the doctor and lawyer, merchant, shoe-maker, and all who make a living by the farmer, should go free. One. I cries for Free Trade, another howls for Protection. We see the labourer compassing the destruction of the employer and insisting upon Protection for his labour while the employer must not buy in the cheapest market, which must soon drive him to the wall and into the bankruptcy court, to swell the ranks of the unemployed, for labour, like any other commodity, can only be regulated by the law of supply demand, and must, as surely as water, find its level, and can no more be banked up than the Waikato River. Unless the supply can be cut off it must burst its hanks and cause disaster to all concerned. And if only a few are employed at a high rate under a protective tariff, what is to become of the weak, and the many w |] l) must always increase if employers are made to pay more than they can afford ? All are bound up together, and must stand or fall in a common ruin. (Jan anyone think the millions lost to the country, the employers, and the labourers in the late London strikes can ultimately benefit anyone, or make a greater demand for labour in the aggregate. It may ruin the employers in London, and drive the trade to Liverpool, Amsterdam, Antwerp, or elsewhere, and may prevont men being employed, but can benefit no one buc the instigators, who arc not labourers, but birds of prey. I see that a clergyman m the south advocates "assuming possession of the land" as a remedy. .1 would not say 41 ne sutor sed crepidam,' for it is a question of vital importance; bull would expect a minister of the gospel to weigh well what he says, and give some reason for the faith which is in him. If a common thief steals my watch I would define the action in a vulgar way, but I c;innotthink that a man, professing to bo a Christian, can think of returning to the good old plan " For him to take who has the powor, For him to keep who can—" It the land is assumed possession of, it is simply robbery; if bought, it is simply absurd, and would throw the world back tc the time of William the Conqueror, when men were the vassels of the stato. I have not time to touch upon its effects, politically, morally, economically, or socially, 01 of H. George's and Bellamy's nostrums, They remind me of an attempt I made when a small boy, to make purpetnal motion. I told the old dominie my idea, and he said it Inst him a nitrht's sleep ; the minister said it was ingenious, and most of the kirk and cession said it was first rate, so with the help of the blacksmith and joiner, I made a model, which was to revolutionise the world, but alas, for me and the world it had the same fault as 11. ( reorgo'* and Bellamy's model—it would not work. I am, otc., , r T. M.