WEIGHTY WORDS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 November 1931, Page 4

WEIGHTY WORDS

WHAT LABOUR POLICY MEANS. Mr Downie Stewart speaking at Dunedin on Monday night, said he did not complain when be found that'’ the poor, destitute and -'unemployed were angry and resentful at the hardships.that bad times imposed on them. That was natural and inevitable. What he did deplore was the fact that the Labour Party should seek to exploit the misfortunes of the poor and urge them to adopt measures- which it much know, could only result in appalling: disaster. ■ ' / He had spoken in many election campaigns and contests, both in his own electorate and in other .parts of New Zealand, during the last seventeen years, but he had never made a statement with -a graver sense of responsibility than the one he was about to make. It was his deliberate con-, viction, based on intimate knowledge, that if the policy put before the electors by the Labour Patty was given effect to, New Zealand would, without question, be faced with national default, repudiation and insolvency. They were struggling at present with overwhelming difficulties. .' Their sources of revenue were drying up faster than their expenditure could be curtailed. The only way by which this drift in the national finance could be checked was by the utmost effort of the whole nation. If an attempt were made to put in operation the Labour Party’s, policy the working classes of the Dominion would be plunged into unspeakable misery, compared with which their present lot;, hard as it was, was tolerable. The Labour Party opposed all measures of economy and retrenchment and promised to 1 increase expenditure by millions of pounds out of revenue that could not be raised, quite apart from its borrowing policy.. This could have one result and one result only, that was national insolvency. An individual who became bankrupt might hope that his friends would com© to his assistance, but a. bankrupt I nation had no friends and found the world hard and pitiless. In such a catastrophe no one would readily ©oiffa to its aid unless self interest prompted it to do so. Not only so, but in the general breakdown it was the working class that suffered far more than any other class. It was not merely that the working man’s savings vanished, hut industries closed down, unemployment spread rapidly and destitution was almost universal.