EMIGRANT'S PARTING SHOT.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 145, 27 May 1893, Page 2

EMIGRANT'S PARTING SHOT.

TO TIIE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sin,— As " Colonist '* studiously acoids saying what the advent of Freetrade in New Zealand would bring to us, I am going to tell it for him. Its advent was intended to close, and does close, the doors of our M sickly industries,'' and capitalists, having money invested in these industries, either carry their re« spective '* plants " to Protection < Colonies (in which case their workmen might fol- -* low them), or they do not, and if they do not, then several thousands of .people are suddenly thrown on, and dislocate, our labor market, which brings wagesdown ; and as lost customs revenne would have to be made good, land would have to bear the straiu of farther taxation to make it up; but landowners would not bear it, they would throw the tax on laborers by reducing their wages, , and this crisis offering a favorable op* portunity they would have the game m their own handg. After a. few months time of weary, waiting misery, the 'fat*tory people agiee to take less wages from, aDd give longer time to their masters, than they formerly did, and the sickly industries are started again, and imported goods do not increase much in§ volume. Bye and bye, (and perhaps we* should wish it to come quickly,) the importation of alcoholic liquor* ce&9es, and again owing to loss of customs revenue, more taxation goes on land, and again landowners throw the tax on laborers by reducing their wages, . Labor ia now. so low that no one proposes to poll tax, or pole axe, foreigners because they come offering cheap labor, and they pour in. And now all the Toms can bay cheap shoes—if they hare anything to buy them with; and when they: think/ of getting land they will look to the planet Jupiter for, it, land in their own planet haying got too far away from them Again labour must go down, for competition becomes severer and this time the workers' British blood boils, and they strike. But in vain, their masters have to urge necessity — " the tyrants plea," and now the Dutch auctioneer — that is the free labourer, steps on the boards and becomes master of the si£ua# tion, and by his foolish, traitorous kind Of^ freedom knocks himself and. his fellow / workmen down to manufacturers low bids. On the other hand land becomes : more valuable, cheap labour does that, and owners of large stations becomes very wealthy — they buy up adjoining estates, for farmers are dazzled by fancy prices offered them, they sell' and go to live in large towns, also, to swell the number ot proletarians. The borders of large estates canter on perhaps at the rate of ten miles a year, as I have seen them do beyond the sea, till the country becomes-; desolate, and the towns huge camps of misery and wealth. It is at this stage of Proe trade's progress, that I see a certain man, hat in hand, standing on a rata stump, with a puzzled look on his face at the aspect of affairs in the wake of the I Freetrade camels march. I say to him ; You might have known it would do all this mischiet ; the see-saw principles of Freetrade do not work as you expected they would, Colonies, far less nations, cannot yet afford to combine and have their work done on the division of labor principle, they must build themselves up and prepare for the contingency of war. " But do not take on so, that's a dear," the big heads and the big hearts are planning federation of colonies, of kingdoms, and of labor ; are planning federa* tions not lawful to be mentioned yet ; and rest assured that " tampering " with the wild beast of the desert will not be necessary much longer. They will find out how to tame her, and within bounds reader her safe and beneficial to mankind. I am, etc., Emigrant.