POLITICAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1076, 15 March 1913, Page 3

POLITICAL.

MR MASSEY’S RECENT

SPEECH

“I was immensely pleased with the meeting,” said Mr Massey to a pressman referring to his recent speech. “It was a meeting after my own heart. I feel quite certain that it has done an enormous amount of good. I think the Opposition played into my hands every time. They got more converts than my own speeches. I would willingly travel a thousand miles to have another meeting like that.”

A Press representative had a few minutes’ talk with Mr Massey again prior to his departure for Ashburton on Wednesday morning, and the Prime Minister again expressed his gratification with the result of Tuesday night’s meeting. There was one point, Mr Massey said, that he desired to amplify, and that was the reference made by him in the course of his speech to the cost to the Dominion of the loans recently floated on the Eondon market. The cost ot the Ward Government’s £5,000,0000 loan worked out at £4 12s per cent.; that of the Mackenzie Government’s £4,500,000 loan worked out at £5 2s qd per cent. ; while the cost of the ,£3,000,000 loau negotiated a month or so ago by the Hon. J. Allan worked out at £4 5s 6d per cent. The latest loan was raised at 4 per cent, for 98. In other wqrds the ,£3,000,000 loan cost 17s 3d per cent, less than the £4, 500,00 loau, and per cent, less than the £5,000,000, or a saving in round figures ol ,£SOOO as compared with the cost of the Mackenzie Government’s £4,500,000 loan. It should also be borne in mind at the time that the £3,000,000 loau was floated the English money market was seriously disturbed, and was in a condition much less favourable to colonial loan flotations than it was at the time when the ,£5,000,000 and the £4,500,000 loans were offered. Despite the unfavourable condition of the English money market, when the £3,000,000 loan was floated, 20 per cent of it was taken up by the public, as compared with 13 per cent, of the £4,500,000 and 7 per cent, ot the £5,000,000 loap,