WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 March 1922, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

MEAT POOL,

CONSTITUTION OF EXPORT BOARD SPECIAL TO GUARDIAN. WELLINGTON, March 8. The delay in announcing the result of the stock and station agents’ ballot for the eighth member of the Meat Export Board lias givlen rise to a rumour that the Government is not satisfied with the agents’ choice and will refuse to ratify it under the Act. In doing this it would he quite within its rights, since the law leaves the final appointment entirely within its discretion. But having gone to the leilgthof submitting the appointment to a ballot the Government would place itself in an extremely invidious position by refusing to accept the nomination of a candidate said to have been selected by more than a threefourths majority. It seems more likely that the delay in confirming the nomination is due to the absence of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture from town. The gentleman selected is the head of one of the largest stock and station agencies in the Dominion arid on personal grounds there could be no possible objection to his appointment. SOLDIER SETTLEMENT.

The Commissioner of Crown Lands and three members of .the local Land Board spent four days in the Wairarapa last week and during that time managed to inspect the holdings' of eighty returned soldiers settled in the district. Their report is to the effect that under normal conditions the great majority of tl.e.-c settlers would have done well, hut that under the conditions now prevailing many of them will require much more assistance than was contemplated when they were placed on the land. It is tlie old story with the old, old moral. Most of these men took up their holdings with light hearts when butter-fat was worth over 2s a pound and when those in authority were assuring them the price would hold for at least three or four years. But now it is down to 9d or Is a pound and the value of the land producing it lias declined in the same ratio. It is no good in these circumstances telling the men what vonkl have happened had boom prices continued. What they want to learn is how to meet with rt much shrunken income an irreducible expenditure. Mismanaged railways.

There is a great deal of genuine sympathy here with the protest against the mismanagement of the railways made by the commercial travellers at their conference in Christchurch yesterday. The grievance is' a very old one with Wellington. Probably the province contains a larger proportion of users of the lines than does any other district i« the Dominion and there is scarcely a person viUiin its borders that has not bad occasion to grumble over the service at om? lime or another. Rut the idea of selling the railways—which happily was abandoned by the commercial travellers—finds little favor in this community. Nor are the existing troubles widely attributed to political influence. The popular opinion is tlv one voiced by Mr D. W. McLean at yesterday’s conference \that the remedy lies in returning more commercial men to Parliament, men, that is. who would stand by the Government, independent of party, in applying sane business methods to all the public departments. Mr Massey’s intentions in this direction have been admirable, but they remain only half fulfilled because the Prime Minister lias not the knowledge and the push of business men behind him. SHADOW OF ELECTION.

The leader of the Liberal-Labour Opposition has snatched a few days from his professional labours during the last fortnight to make a hurried survey of the constituencies, and expresses himself as very well satisfied with the result. He thinks he sees in the attitude of the country a pretty general des:r>‘ for more progressive legislation and more vigorous administration, with a readjustment of taxation and an effective land settlement' policy. In the Auckland district, which hitherto has been a stronghold of Reform, there are marked indications of a coming change and the reports from the South are entirely satisfactory' from the LiberalLabour point of view. Mr Wilford does not expect the Hollandites and Ibe Fraserites to come into the new progressive fold, but ho believes that their experience in Parliament has brought them to Realise that the half loaf, from their standpoint, is better than no bread and that it is wiser to make progress slowly than to continue to recede. Meanwhile, however, he is content to mind his own business and leave his friends to ljiind theirs.