The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1906. PROSPERITY AND THE LOAN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3721, 27 October 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1906. PROSPERITY AND THE LOAN.

Sir Joseph Ward emitted an optimistic shout in the House the other evening when he informed the country that the State already had nine hundred thousand pounds of its million loan jingling in its pocket. The result of these negotiations, pursued the smiling Premier, showed “ that the colony was travelling along the highway of prosperity.” For a financial genius to make this statement is proof enough to the man who is not a financial genius that the way to make a country prosperous is to pile up debts for the “ children yet unborn. ’ ’ Another loud cheer goes up from the optimist that the revenue was larger than ever, the surplus fatter than before and the apples on the tree rosy to look on. * * * New Zealand only owes the moneylender a little over sixty-five million pounds and its sinking funds are about the smallest sums one ever sees in any statement of the country’s accounts. If the “ pathway to prosperity ” is paved with pawn tickets, the said pathway is going to be a thorny road

for those who have to pick them up and meet the liabilities that the Premier and the House look upon with such cheerful smiles. While the country is positively seething with prosperity, it is smilable to read the almost angry discussions by Members of the House who upheld the lyoan Bill; on the subject of crawling railways, impassible roads, disgraceful schoolhouses, underpaid schoolteachers and the like.

Borrowing money is not prosperity, whatever the Premier may say, for the works upon which the borrowed money is spent will not, during the present generation pay a tithe of the interest on the money used to prosecute them. The revenue of the country is not a true gauge of its prosperity. The true test is the individual wealth of the people. The fact is that the said people are mercilessly taxed so that the colony’s credit may be pledged for still more money to carry on works that are not prosecuted with vigour, other absolutely necessary works not being undertaken at all.

* * * Thk military “defence” of this country costs over two millions a year. It is the biggest absurdity that happens. It is for idiotic purposes such as this that loans are raised and when loans are raised the Premier calls the success of a loan “the pathway of progress ” or the rose strewn alley of prosperity or something equally high-falutin’. When wool is a good price, butter not bad and when the whole country is doing as well as it can with itself, it is the signal for another loan, which is another way of knocking the profit off the wool and butter and so on. * f*. * Of a surety “prosperity” in loans means high land valuations, high prices for every day necessities to keep up our magnificent revenue that after all doesn’t seem to induce us to try to pay back a very large proportion of the money we owe. Some day a Government may come along that will last for a fortnight without raising a loan. The people will look upon such a Government as a collection of lunatics, because they haven’t been used for two decades or more to a Government that didn’t call borrowing “ prosperity.”