Not So Mad

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19980, 4 July 1939, Page 16

Not So Mad

Sir, —On. any return home the other day and looking up a copy of the

Herald my inieresii was roused by the sensational headline, "Board Gone Mad.” I found the lunatic to be the Main Highways Board and the specialist who diagnosed the ease to be the Cook County Council. Cr. M T. B. Hall is reported to have said, “I think the Main Highways Board has gone completely mad.” The symptom of the dread malady she specialist found was the expenditure of large sums of money on the main ! highways of the Dominion. On read--1 ing further 'the report of the coun- ! oil's meeting I found also that the board was not so mad as its traducers attempted to show, for the neighbouring Waii'kohu County wanted to fill are in the extravagance and madness of the board and the Minister rf Public Works, the ITon. R. Semple. I found reading the report amusing. I could not help thinking that the Main Highways Board wao accused of madness because its head is only a Labour Minister. Nationalists seem to claim all the sa niiity for themselves J Even, for the sake of argument, were the board or the Minister mad there is “method tin, the madness” which \ cane folk cannot see. It is an ele- 1

mentary economic tru-:h that no country could bo prosperous without the full and free .circulation of money within fits borders. It is essential that t'he purchasing power of the people, as ibhe Labour Government has often pointed out, must be sustained and increased. A friend of mine Elbowed me a copy of Smith’s Weekly, an Australian popular periodical. I do not know whether il.e paper is a Labour organ; I do not think ft is. At any rate it extolled Queensland, a Labour State, as the most prosperous in the Commonwealth because of its vigorous public works policy, a policy similar to that persued in New Zealand. The Minister of Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple and the Main Highways Board .are, after all, not so mad as the Cook County Council would have us believe. The old Tory Government adopted a reverse policy and the country, .as might be expected, suffered terribly. We should learn from ike' past. R. T. KOHERE.