Rangitikei Advocate. SATURDAY, NOV. 30, 1907. EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXII, Issue 9015, 30 November 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. SATURDAY, NOV. 30, 1907. EDITORIAL NOTES.

MR KEIR HARDIE, after visiting India, gave a doleful account oii his arrival at Perth of the conditions of the natives of India, The peasants, he said, were in the last stage of poverty. For the last ten years famine and plague had been with thein nearly all the time, their stamina had gone, and generally speaking their lot was deplorable. If we grant that Mr Hardio's review of the condition of a country containing 300,000,000 people is correct, it is surprising that ho has no remedy to suggest except that India should be granted representative insttiutions on the same lines as Canada, It is pitiable to iiud a man who professes to be a social reformer offering what he must realise is a stone when bread is required. Tiie question, however, is not whether the condition of the peoples of India is deplorable compared with the standard of comfort enjoyed by the British working men, but whether the Stat? of the people is worse under British than it was under native rule, and whether there are sigus that it is getting worse instead of better. Those who have lived in India for years and not merely spent a few weeks' holiday there assure us that the conditions in India are far better than they were in bygone years. Life and property are sale and justice is meted out with_ an even hand for rich and poor alike. Famines occur, as they have always done, when the monsoons failed, but improved communications have done much to mitigate their effects, and every resource of the Government is put forward to relievo the sufferers from lack of food. Plague, it is true, has been very fatal owing to the immovable prejudices of the natives against the precautions demanded by modern sanitation, but the death rate lias not been a tenth of what would have occurred in the old days- of native rule. It is difficult to say whether the average conditions of life are better or worse than thoy wero, say, twenty years ago, but wo cannot but think that the earnest efforts of administrators and the self-sacrificing work of missionaries have produced some amelioration in tiie lot of natives. Progress must bo slow, but wo refuse to believe that there lias been.no progress made.

THE state of affairs in Germany, where protective tariffs have, we are told, been reduced to a science, is not all that could bo wished. The cost of bread aud meat is rapidly rising, aud tho working classes are finding it increasingly difficult to provide even the mode ': fare to which the German artisan is accustomed. In Germany the agricultural interests are all powerful and have demanded and obtained protecotivo duties just as high as tho.w e;j joyed by manufacturing industries. At the present time it is doubtful whether Germany cm, produce enough food for her rapidly increasing population, but the agriculturalists care nothing for this so long as they can obtain high prices owing to< the exclusion . of foreign meat and tho high tariff ou cereals. The Minister for tho Interior who attenanted to reply in the Reichstag to the complaint of a Socialist deputy that tho cost of living had increased'by one-third in the last decade does not appear to have made out a very convincing case. Ho said that increased wages had raised the standard of living. As an illustration, he assured Ins hearers that tho amount of meat consumed in Gormauy had risen nearly to the British level—tno maximum' apparently of wild extravagance. Put in plain language, the Minister said that tho workers expected too much, and also should be content with cheaper food and a loss expensive maimer of liviiig.

Wo hardly think sentiments like 1 theso appeal to the vast number ot working class voters in Germany, and wo foresee that tho junkers or landed proprietors who have hitherto ruled in Prussia will have a hard struggle to maintain their supremacy if the scientific protection of agriculture means that the masses are to starve, or something near it, in order to maintain tho high level or profits for landowners.