CORRESPONDENCE.

Shannon News, 29 September 1922, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—-The Welfare League evidently prefers to use your columns for nothing to paying for its share of hall rent to debate the most important plarik of any party’s platform—for which 1 am very sorry. If the writer of the letter in your issue on Saturday had been at Mr McCombs’ meet-

ing, he would have had a better grip of what he was writing of—that- Mr

McCombs was there to reply to a previous speech by the Prime Minister, and used the time at his disposal to the best advantage, and consequently could not go fully into this or any plank of the platform. The League objects that the State should value all privately-owned land, such valuation to remain on record as the

owner's interest in the land; also that privately-owned land shall not be sold or transferred except to the State. Unless a man wants a gamble, what.., could be fairer than giving him the value of his land if be wants to sell. We don't compel (him or his children to sell so long as they use and occupy it. Compare, this fair and clear proposal with the present, system, where the producers of our fair country have a mortgage! of £230,000,000 round their necks, where the man on the land is slaving his life away

trying to pay the awful interest, where the farmer is being .sold up and turned into the street, where the production of the farms is deteriorating through the occupier having no means of buying the necessary implements, manures, etc. Confiscation! Ye gods! In ai world sphere where this system has brought about bloody Wars, poverty, disease, prostitution', and all the evils the world is suffering from. With this load on its shoulders, it is pure effrontery on the Welfare League’s part to try and write down a people who are endeavouring to lift this monster to allow the nation to breathe. When did Ballance or Grey advocate this plank? On every platform during the -1889-90 campaign, to supply the missing link in perfecting the village settlement scheme, and the Welfare League’s party villifled and distorted him to a greater extent, if possible, than ihey do the party which to-day has similar ideals. There was no doubt in the minds of the people in those days that it was the vileness of the epithets and slanders used that brought New Zealand’s greatest statesman to an early grave. I have neither the library or munificent salary of the Welfare League’s scribe, nor can I give the time to supply further details, but

being a member of Ballance’s committee at the time, and an employee of his, I well knew his platform and aspirations. The rest of the League’s writer’s letter will be read by the readers of the Chronicle as the remarks of a disappointed man, who has perhaps been fired out of the Reds, Extremists, Bolsheviks (or any old name), because his proper sphere was in advocating a policy that brought New Zealand in the 80’s and 9Q’s to unemployment, soup kitchens and misery, just as it has done today.—l am, etc., J. W. THOMPSON.