TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 137, 6 December 1929, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY

"They put us in a swamp." This interjection was made at the meeting addressed at Moera last evening by Mr. H. F. Johnston, who had just pointed out the incontestable fact that the Reform Government was responsible for the creation of the Moera workers' home suburb. Unique in New Zealand, Moera has been regarded as a credit to any Government, and it is to be hoped that the collective gratitude of the people of Moera is not summed up in that querulous sentence, "They put us in a swamp." Surely an occasional flooding—which seems to be due partly to the backing up of rivers by a certain combination of wind and tide, partly to human failure to anticipate same—is not such as to cancel the interest of the Moera people in their town-planned homes, or to expunge from their minds the knowledge that it was the so-called capitalist Government that bought private land at an advantageous figure and turned the advantage over to the people of Moera, to the factories (including the State railway workshops), and in aimeasure to the sec-tion-buyers of Woburn-Waterloo (though the latter had to bid for their land at public auction). The Government itself did no building of homes save for the workers, and it gave preference to big families badly housed and with clean records. After allowing for all criticisms, Moera remains a notable achievement, a credit alike to the far-seeing man who arranged the land-purchase options, and to the Ministers that backed him. We cannot believe that the interjection is representative of Moera's state of mind. * ♦ * Yesterday's cablegrams touched in a comparative way the reaction of the United States to gambling inflation, and the reaction of Australia to what seems to be a more widespread inflation. The note of caution in America towards banking changes is dominant. Washington seems to have been at pains to repudiate an Australian report that "the United States Federal Reserve Bank contemplates an expansion of the note issue in the interests of unemployment." "A wild dream" is the term applied to the report by Mr. Owen Young, of international finance fame. The American repudiation seems to be intended mainly for Australian consumption (as, no doubt, the original Australian report was). Behind Mr. Young's remark seems to be the feeling that no repudiation is needed in America, but that Australian propaganda and Australian psychology are a different thing. And so they are if one may judge them by the cabled version of Mr. Anstey's remarks. But if Mr. Anstey misfired, the more easy it will be for Mr. Theodore to load up with a different kind of cartridge. He might take a hint from Mr. Mellon's policy cabled to-day. « * * It is alleged by the Reform candidate for the Hutt seat that the Petone workshops are being starved owing to the railways construction policy of building "white elephants" in the South Island. The criticism is one of far wider interest than a mere local "point" made in a local by-elec-tion. The Petone workshops are not so much a matter of concern, from the wider standpoint, as is the maintenance of rolling, stock, which affects the railways system as a whole. Some little time ago the condition of rolling stock left very much to be desired, but we were under the impression that the leeway was being made up. Mr. Johnston, however, predicts that as an outcome of diversion of money from workshops to railway excavation (unemployment relief) "our rolling stock will go back and it will take millions to restore it." This is a rather sweeping indictment. One would expect the Government candidate to be armed with a reply. » * * To meet with injury in the house of one's friends is by no means uncommon, but it is none the less painful; and one can almost see Mr. David Jones's hair rise when he reads the sentence passed upon the Meat Board by Mr. C. D. Dickie, chairman of the Patea Freezing Company. True, Mr. C. D. Dickie is not the Mr. Dickie who represents as a Reformer a Taranaki constituency in Parliament, but they are brothers, and both arc evidently wrapped up exceedingly closely with those meat-produc-ing interests that Mr. Jones also has so near at heart. We would not venture to decide where doctors differ, but it is not too much to say that Mr. C. D. Dickie's criticism of the cool stores site purchased "on the wrong side of the Thames, squandering £30,000," calls for an answer. It will not be like Mr. Jones if he has not an answer coming, for the capacity of the Meat Board chairman and the Reform M.P. are equally attacked. The less concrete charges are more likely to end in a no-decision verdict, still they, too, cannot be ignored, since they came from a practical man whose associations suggest that he would not proceed to tear to pieces a Reform-created institution unless he felt he had a case. The spirit of conflict is also heightened by a commendatory reference to the Dairy Board, though that body, too, has in its tizne known the fickle fortunes that attend the evolution of farmer opinion. After the Poison schism of the recent session, which took somewhat the form of Taranaki versus The Rest, this Taranaki onslaught upon Canterbury seems almost like a counter-attack. Mr. Poison heard some hard things about himself. But to-day the Meat board, of which Mr. Jones is chairman, has become an "octopus," which word seems to have been culled from a Gisbome essay of several years a-o on meat combines. °