TWO TOPICS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1579, 9 October 1905, Page 3

TWO TOPICS.

[(To the Editor Gisborne Times,: Sir, —I* would seem that no address by an Opposition candidate is complete without an ailaok being made upon the co-operative system. The speaker generally states that he is opposed to that method of carrying out public works, and favors instead a systsm of small contracts. Are not these orators awaro that the cooperative is nothing but a system of small contracts made by the workmen themselves, and rigorously excluding the prohtmaker and middleman ? Ignorance is not always oriminal; sometimes it is nothing but pure incapacity to understand a simple fact, but ignorance of this density is inex* cusablo in a would-be legislator. The reason that the Farmers’ Union sort of person opposes oo operation ai applied to public works—he has no objection to it m running big freezing works—is not far to see. That system ensures to the workman the full amount that he is able to earn, no mote and no leas, without any deduction being made for the profitmongar, and the members of wbat should be known as the Landowners and Employers’ Union, who foe the most part live on the labor of other 'people, ate not in the least likely to favor such an equitable system becoming

universal. . . , Another standing dish is the freehold tenure. Mr Wall states that he “ strongly supported the right of every man to acquire the freehold of whatever property bo occupied.” Probably the speaker did not quite realise what he wa3 saying, but if he really meant that all tenants, public and private, should have the right to buy tbeir land outright, ho will find many supporters on this side of tho fence. Such a land law would not loave a landlord in New Zealand in five years. Probably Mr Wall suffered from a vagueness common to Oppositionists ' and Prohibitionists, and only meant all " Grown ” tenants, and that they should be allowed to buy at the original valuations on the ground that the increased value had boon given the land by their labor and energy. Many people have the same idea—that the State is fair game,,to be plundered wholesale if it is possible to do so without being in daDger of the Polios I Court. But that this increased value is

made by the tenants is only vory partially , true. One of the meet important factors ia she purchasing potter of the people of lation in this country. Certain laud in oi Gisborne, in exactly the oafUe state of unimprovoment as it was one years ago, has increased in price fully "430 per oent without a day ! s work or a shilling being spent upon it by the owner. Another instance. In some future sge tbe &araka railway will, perhapß, teach the Mota lands, where thore are many Crown tenants. When the rail arrives their holdings will almost certainly increase in value ‘25 to 50 per cent. Did these settlers make the railway ? Did they pay a one hundredth part of the cost ? And yet they do not hesitate to ask that the whole of this iooroment shall be banded over to them as a free gift. It is diflioult to see how anyone with even a rudimentary sense of honesty oan uphold such a wholesale spoliation of tbe public estate for the benefit of tbe landholder and the moneylender.—l am, eto., ' CO-OP.