Forty Years a Liberal

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 628, 3 April 1929, Page 2

Forty Years a Liberal

LIFE STORY OF SIR JOSEPH WARD From Telegraph Messenger to Prime Minister By R. A. LOUGHNAN (Copyright —Sun Feature Service) ENTERING Parliament in ISS7, Sir Joseph Ward is a veteran among contemporary statesmen and his career is traced and described in this series of articles by RA. Lougtman for readers of The Sun. No. IX.

This liberality in the judgment of advanceable value was much criticised as the time, as a wild venture into the dangerous unknown. Time and the board have settled that point well and truly. BUZZARD OF CRITICISM The measure did not get the quick passage through the unanimous Parliament, accorded to its predecessor ot the momentous financial crisis. It was beset by opposition in Parliament and ridicule outside. The various obstacles in its road need not be noticed in detail. That necessity is obviated by the greatly successful history of three and thirty years—a whole generation. Friends regretted that the measure did not approach, or it did not reach the establishment of a State Bank. Thus they averred the State failed to get the full measure of banking profits, at the head of which they placed the highly profitable business, as they called it, of Exchange. The enemies declared that the measure would turn the State into a vast pawnshop run haphazard on the “borrow and scatter” principle—a forerunner of the “Borrow, Boom, Bust” slogan which hailed the Ward election manifesto of 1928. The forerunner has been buried by the wheels of success, as men now forgotten were buried under the famous car of Juggernaut. Sir Joseph Ward’s supporters have some reason to regard this as a favourable precedent. To borrow the simile of the car —- the Act in the beginning had some difficulty in starting. A good many anxious applicants were kept out of the desired advance longer than suited their financial convenience. The storm of criticism rose to blizzard height; of course. The Treasurer’s reply was strong enough to increase the public regard for the new measure for helping the settlers with the public credit without endangering the taxpayer’s pocket. It was a simple statement of the difficulty of finding expert valuers for the guidance of the work of advances. The delay being evidence of financial prudence keeping with determination on the sound lines set out in the Treasurer’s explanation, the support for the pawnshop theory faded away. CLAIM TO CONFIDENCE It reminds us of Masefield’s ballad of "Cape Horn Gospel,” in which the ghost of a dead and buried seaman got back to his ship at night and “Sodjered about decks till sunrise W r lien a rooster in the hencoop crowed, When like so much smoke he faded. And like so much smoke he goed.” The years of the Cabinet work of the opponents who replaced the Cabinet of the Liberal Party have added a strong fact of corroborative detail. They have used the Advances with thoroughness of practical sympathy, increased Its moneys, enlarged its scope, made use of its well-devised mashinery of control, and claimed for their work the confidence of the nation on the ground of successful prudential care of the public interest. They have given the existing proof-touch to the financial scheme devised by Sir Joseph Ward a generation ago. Worked by him through many years in the Seddon and Ward Ministries and through the years of his service in the War Coalition Government, who can deny that man’s claim to confidence as a statesman planning measures for the public benefit, and establishing them on foundations well and truly laid? EUROPEAN LESSONS The Advances to Settlers makes a landmark in Parliament record for 1894. Is It more—it is one of the great landmarks in the New Zealand story of systematic, efficient Government; if not the greatest on the material side of things. Mr. Ward brought down the scheme cut and dried in a Bill for Parliament to pass, and explained it in a speech, simple and businesslike. He began by a reference to the first Credit Financier of history, told how Frederic the Great of Prussia established that system In 1770. under circumstances similar to those ruling in New Zealand at the date of the introduction of this Bill. Interest was high prices of produce were low’ farm lands were out of favour Z lth ,.J™ s tors of capital, and the difficulty of renewing mortgages rtaLTff r L SerlOUS ’ To reme dy this state of things was an imperative necessity. The king devised the Credit Financier to help the languishing industry of agriculture and started it ° f £45 ’ 000 - The benefits o the Prussian farmer were so great that in a few years every state of Germany had established a similar syswhich h«d ntl K ry lat6r the system hich had been introduced into France, was recorded to have advanced eizhtT.T an agsrre sate of between eight and nine millions sterling with perfect safety to the State ’ Wr?d tlfi hsa by , these examples Mr. ward had devised his Advances duc e e “Vf °th? nd CaPltal f ° r the V™ Sp.wßsKKs tor ,h. oI . »' “M

A GREAT SCHEME all T hlch caused sss?-. »" po°.k ‘ciirir juA.ii But really that =1 money provided. H.v,« tl .

of a strangling difficulty found u«, way out, he asked Parliament to tzi.' It without hesitation or limitation!], was the very thing to be expected from a financial leader worthy of the name This scheme introduced by jj. Ward in IS9R we all know. Most 0 ' us. if not all, speak of it as a gr e ,[ scheme. We know also that it « u much opposed. But that is by t 0 means rare. The unknown and us expected makes always a start lint commotion in the political a tines phere. Sometimes its fate, followw the old proverb, is to be regarded aj magnificent. Often it strikes terror The latter is generally the case in the political world. Our classical example is the reception accorded Sir Julius Vogel's great scheme of gration and public works which tell like a bolt out of the blue. The house was hushed, and out of the silence came these words of W. Reader 'Wood esteemed a very wise politician in hii dav: Mr. Wood “desired to state tliathe had listened with very patient «t----tention to the Financial Statement of the Colonial Treasurer, a:id he might say that in all his experience he had never heard of a scheme so wild, so unpractical and so impracticable, as the scheme the honour able gentleman had detailed to them.” “And Brutus is an honourable man’ many men commented —so he sras And moreover, Mr. Wood was one of the great orators of Parliament in his day. WONDERFUL PROGRESS But what do all men say toniay of the great scheme which ig the father of the National Debt and the wonderful national progress ot the SS years intervening? What they are saying is not in agreement with Mr. Reader Wood, whose vitriolic diatribe is completely forgotten, dead and buried most honourably in the nnnumental pages of Hansard. Such also is the fate of the arguments flung at the Advances to Settlers—with one exception. These diatribes were resurrected from their graves, promptly, in the shape of eulogies reverently bowing before fundamental truth. More than that —in this year (1903) of Sir Joseph’s Acting-Premier-ship there was a rush of people falling over one another claiming the credit for the first suggestion of the scheme. As the first advocates for “cheap money” two estimable enterprising gentlemen—Messrs Falbeitb, of Hawera and Newlynn of Chris‘.church—actually claimed substantial consideration from Parliament for that great public service. They had (from many causes not necessary to mention I quite a number of supporters. Their petitions were referred to'the proper committee, which, after long and patient hearing, recommended favourable consideration, and presented their report. This report occupied the House for a whole afternoon, with a most interesting and protracted debate, occasionally bitter, often sarcastic, and in places glowing. The said debate “talked” the strange topic “out,” as the phrajse goes in Parliamentary procedure. The debate was not confined to the cases of the two gentlemen who had written each a letter to a newspaper, and had done much propaganda of a sort, which had worried editors with a keen sense of nuisance—and of these the present writer was one who still feels a staggering memory of his feelings toward the persistent advocate of “cheap money.” One of these, by the way, the House was informed in the debate by an old Parliamentarian, had had his sketchy suggestion blown to pieces by that master fighter Sir Harry Atkinson. MAELSTROM OF FINANCE

Another reminded the House of a more solid effort by Mr. W. Macandrew the great superintendent of Otago, fa mous for his criticism of the mael Strom of colonial finance. He quoted in outline the Bill, the southern cham pion of “cheap money”—which he had actually described as for "Advances to Settlers.” The House was duly impressed wher. all other members described the sketchy nature of this Bill, and without safeguards or working plan, so to speak, and duly grinned at the member’s description of the wild hilarity with which the Bill had been denounced by Messrs. Stoat. Scobie McKenzie, Dr. Newman and others. That Bill of Macandrew’s was read a second time, only seven yearn ago, but in that short time it had been completely forgotten, as the prolonged stare and sharp interjections of math members plainly indicated. And > broad ironic smile went round the House when the hon. member —it was George Fisher—wound up his description of levity with the statement that the only member of the Govenunen' then in the House who had voted against that second reading was Mr Seddon. There was an interjection, sharp and clear, with a sub-note of glee — “OS' cumstances alter cases.” But MrFisher was not caring for circuisstances. He was stating facts, addict not mind whom they might affe c! or how. But the expected roar died as ; - came. The chief circumstances werf too well understood—the BUI waa 1 mere suggestion and Mr. Seddon * a * the Premier of the Government vrhic had passed the Advances Act tbrouf Parliament, so fashioned that it n*° moved on to great success. WHO WAS THE ORIGINATORAnother claimant for the put. forward by friends ir that dep was W. Warburton the then Audi General. He had given a Mr. Ballance, which the Leader had, before his death, been sidering with his Cabinet. The , o °i, TS of this was, of course, to try and p that Mr. Ward was not the origi® of the scheme he had put rhroug fj„to House so brilliantly and the successful course now the vutv 1 tion of all. (To be continued daily)