LABOUR POLICY.

Shannon News, 26 August 1924, Page 3

LABOUR POLICY.

MR SEMPLE IN LEVIN. MR SEMPLE’S VISIT. During. Mr. Semple’s visit to Shannon at the week-end lie dealt with tlie Labour movement generally uud the. success 01 Mr Ramsay MacDonald in'l bringing about a settlement of European affairs. POSITION OF WAGE-EARNER. Continuing, be said that mainly owing to the effect of depreciation ol currency attributable to tne fate war, the wage-earners in the country were infinitely worse off than they were a , decade ago. In 1887 the average wage 1 of the worker was 9s 9d. To-day Uie / average was 12s Bd, and yet this larger sum represented a purchasing power of 4s s|d less than, the 9s 9d of .1887. The goods which were purchasable with the money earned bore a fictitious value.whilst the. currency was depreciated.

LABOUR’S LAND POLICY. < Touching on trie laud question, tiie speaker stateu uiat Uie general opinion was tnav me nunuur party was m xavour ox confiscation of land. He , had talked witii a great number oi i runners oi late and was glad to note tatit tney were waking up to tiie lies ] whicn hud been told in this respect, j The Labour Party was out to tree the < fanner from 'the toad oi mortgage f < wtiicii at present hung around lus {< neck. To say otherwise was ndicul- < ous. The Labour party irecognised t

tliat the source of aif wealth was the land. The Labour Pafriy represented tnose people who did not receive a suhicieiicy of the good things of the world. They were out to enable the farmer by tne application oi science, to get all that was possible from the land. It had been stated that the Labour Party was out to take the freehold from the farmer. He asked how many of the"farmers of the country had the deeds of their farms in their posses- ' sion. . When the war was over the Reform Government had stated that ds x a* reward for the services which tiie soldiers had rendered to the country they would be given a stalee in the country. They had been settled on tiie land and now alter four years they were leaving, absolutely broke and swelling the ranks of labour, the whole thing to he attributable to the

ill-judged purchasing policy of the Government. The Labour Party claimed that the land should be owned by the State in order that the fanner shipuld be protected from the mortgagee. The speaker quoted > figures to the effect .That of the whole of the farmers in 000, only 4602 paid income tax. When the Reform Party had last year given a rebate on income-tax, these were the only persons who had benefited. The small farmer had got nothing, but the men with the huge incomes had received it.

The same policy applied to the reductions of the civil service salaries. The smaller salaried men had been pruned down and the higher salaried men had been left alone. There were only, 20 men in railway service who received £SOO to £3OOO. Of-these sal-, aries the average reduction was 17s lid per year, whilst the man who received a wage of £4 per week was pruned to the extent of 10s per week.

TO PROTECT THE GENUINE N FARMER.

To return to tne question of the man on the land, there were two kinds ox farmers in New Zealand. There was the farmer who farmed the land ana the farmer -who farmed- the farmer. This iatter man was the one wifii whom the Labour Party had a quar-

rel. During the past rive years tne gambling in laud had placed a dead charge of £13,180,000 On the land, 'a charge which the farmer who farmed the fund had tQ, hear. The total mortgages on land in New Zealand were over £16,000,000, or an amount equal to the total Unimproved value of tiie land.. The money made from the lane in New Zealand by gambling in land values Was more than had been made from it by actual farming and when this was done a country had reached a very serious economic position. Farms had been sold six times or more. There was a farm regarding which he had figures, this farm being sold firstly at £3O per acre ,and finally sold at £9Q per .acre. This increase represented a purely fictitious value. The Labour Party safd that if value was put on as the .result of the work of the farmer, he was entitled to every penny of it. How was this increased value -made up, however. These were some of the figures: Land agents fees £9, stamp duties £3 odd, and legal charges over £5. representing' a total of £lB dead weight per acre charged against, the land. The remainder wont into a mortgage which was strangling the farmer. UNEARNED INCREMENT.

He gave another, illustration: A man in Wellington purchased a city block. It was bought in 1910 for £ll,-. 000. In 1914 it was sold for £21,000, or q, net profit of £IO,OOO. The man who bought this land did not spend one penny on it. Thp increased sum was put on tp the shop-keeper who was forced to pay more rent for his shop and in turn to hand the increased charge on to his customer, the whole as a' result of the iniquitous system of allowing community-increased value to be put into the pockets of the individual' The Labour Party held that no land should be sold save through and by the State. If this form of usury was going on, who was going to stop it. The Government was. the only body capable of doing it. The Government was the guardian of the interests of the people and it was for them to stop the juggling in land which the 1200 land agents of New Zealand were promoting.

OCCUPANCY AND USE, The Government would say to the farmer and the. community, that they would take the sale of the land out of the hands of the speculators and use the land for. the benefit of the man who tilled it: The land policy of the Labour Party was summed up in the slogan “Occupancy and. Use.” In other, words that no man should have land that he was not capable of using, pipd that everything that the farmer

could make from the land as the result of his ovvii industry should be his, free of the crushing burden of artificially inflated prices. Did this look like confiscation? How many men. in the country had the of their farms in their possession. Very few. The £16,000,000 -of mortgages on the land of New Zealand were a crushing burden on the industry of the men who farmed the land, and it was the .industry oi~these men that the Labour Party was out to protect.

The speaker dealt briefly with the profits earned by the insurance companies .and banks, institutions which under the regime of Labour would be concentrated into State-owned concerns, without the present toll of huge profits which were being taken from the workers and the industry oi the country. As a practical man, continued the speaker, one, who had worked in mines of Australia and New Zealand, he had seen the effects of industry as at. present constituted. He had seen men needlessly butchered in the mines of the country and had helped to ear ry out the scorched remains of b;s comrades from the coal-mine, as Pie result of the criminal carelessness ol the mine-owner. He had told the mine-owners ;u the time that their carelessness had been the direct cause of the trouble, and tney had told fiim that bad he be.cn m their place he could not have none better. He had proved otherwise. He hud token a contract from Wellington Municipality for a tunnel, lie bud taken 38 men into the job with him and alter two years and five months during which they bad used ov jr loot) toils of explosive, lie had brought tnese 38 men out without loss ol a single life Or any injury to ho dim. hi the .mines of New Zealand ahd Australia, men were working under conditions Where they knew that as soon as they signed on, they signed their death warrants.

These were the r.indihoiis which the Labour Party w-.e uut to n-medy. Tht leaders Qf slie ' Party had no axe to grind ; they were not tied up to tiie industrial - concerns oi the world as were those of other parties. Ramsay MacDonald had been able to do what he had in England because of his free* doin from the influence of the money magnates. Poincare had failed to do anything in the Ruhr because he was controlled by a .group of French pigirom kings *

“I .am of the opinion,” said Mr Semple in. conclusion, “that the people of the world are waking up to their right of decent living conditions, and so far has the inlightenment spread, that even those who for centuries have had everything, are willing to concede this fact; The time is coining when only the producer will he tolerated in the State and a man will be valued according to his ability to give service. The movement is in full-flood throughout the world and nothing i,hu T can he done will more-than delay it temporarily.” (Continued applause). A number of questions wore answered, these including one 'as to the Party’s attitude in regard to existing mortgages, should the Labour Party nationalise land according to Its policy.

In answer to this Mr Semple’stated that the Labour Party’s policy would be to revalue all land in the country and deal with the farmer on the basis of this revaluation. Where land was of a fictitious value the mortgagee would probably haiv-e to suffer!, but he contended that it would be better to meet the case with .a bold policy such as he had suggested, rather than allow, as wa.s being done at present, the farmers to go off the land one by one, as the burden of the mortgage became too heavy, and the land to go back to the aggregator or to be unproductive. Under the present system the second and third mortgagees were being gradually squeezed out. In the future the remainder would go but before this happened, millions would be' lost to the country in decreased production. The Labour Party advocated a recognition of this fact, and the use of the knife to save the’industry of the country. (Applause).