The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1919 THE OVERHEAD STORM.

Taihape Daily Times, 11 February 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1919 THE OVERHEAD STORM.

(With waien is mcorp.-.r*t;«<J The r*ihape;Poot uxd Walcrarl'jo Naw«).

From every dependable, authentic source conies the opinion that to avoid great privation and suffering, and to enable this country to pay its way and still find money for administrative purposes, the volume of production from the land must be enormously increased. Indeed most people having the natural ability to understand the subject have been impressed with that fact for some considerable time, and many have been positively bewildered to know, why the Natipnal Government did not get to work at organising and instituting the means whereby more production is possible. Our wellinformed Wellington correspondent has brought t3e subject under notice again in an article of absorbing interest published in Monday's issue of this journal. In an interview with the Hon. W. D. S. Macdonald he elicited much interesting information, but it is that regarding the future in which every man, woman and child is most deeply and absorbingly interested, it matters not whether the National bubble bursts in July or December, but it is of very vital importance that steps should be taken at once to produce the money that we have daily evidence must be found. Men throughout the Dominion are alarmed at the callous indifference of men who hang to the public purse strings an/-" OJIO continue to do absolutely nothing to replenish ■ the stores that they are heedlessly and insanely squandering. Mr. Massey knows that the Government that follows him will have a task of almcTst appalling dimensions; he knows that recent government has been such that the country will banish it for over; that so radical will be the change in the new parliament to be elected that the policy of the future can have nothing of governments of the past and present in their composition; he knows that the monetary responsibilities of the incoming government will be hugely increased, increased out of all comparison with those of past governments;' Le knows that there is only one road to greater riches, a fuller treasury chest, and that is through increased production, yet he still persists in a policy vTlficn involves less production. Producers have been warned by economists and financiers from end to end of the Dominion; they have been told that they will have to provide the bulk of the money required and yet they make no effort to bring the present governing indifference to an end. The incidence of future taxation is going to be something very different from that now obj taining, or of any taxation scheme of J the past. Wrongs of ""the people make ; a very long chapter; they date back i a thousand years, very nearly, in BriI tish history; it has taken a thousand I years to educate the people up to a ; sense of their wrongs, up to a realisa- ; tion of the fact that if those wrongs are to be righted they must themselves do the righting. We are on the eve of the people taking matters affecting their future in their own hands, if their methods are crude who is to blame but their erstwhile oppressors? The people have struck and struck again to rid themselves of the burden guile and craft has laid upon them, but they struck at random, not realising the strength of their adversary. By repeated failures they have acquired some wisdom, still there are indications that cute impudence and cunning of the anarchist will succeed in a bloody burst up of society that will leave the masses once more the slaves of far worse masters for long into the future. Interviewed, the Hon. W. D. S. Macdonald disclosed that his feelings were with the people, "but," he said, "the. people would not exercise the influence they should in lm-'

proving their lot, and in shaping the destinies of the- country till they real-' ised that their strength lay in the bal-lot-box and not in tnc promotion of social bitterness and industrial strife.' 1 He said he believed the country is prepared for heroic measures; what are those heroic measures? It is an open secret that very nearly the whole t. Parliament is positively nauseated with the inactivity and inanity of National Government; . that by far the greater number of members are anxiously awaiting the time, not now far distant, wheji sucH "'heroic measures" will be taken to .reconstitute industry and society that may prove a shock to some of the old conservative school. Mr Macdonald said the people could only meet their increased burden of taxation and still enjoy some relaxation by an enormous increase in pro duction. by inducing every suitable man and woman to go upon the land. Why does every Cabinet Minister go on repealing this talk about production, and inducing every man and woman to go on the land while they pursue a headlong policy of aggregation of land, a policy of decreasing production, a policy that keeps every man and woman not. on the land off the land? Had members of Parliament broken loose from a compact they entered into, thinking it was only for a year or eighteen months, even a year ago, and put into practice the "heroic measures" it is well known they are waiting to take, they would have saved the masses of wo"rkers from being led into suicide by cunning men who do not want industrial and social peace, men who want disruption that they may loot and get away. Whatever degree of peacefulness the social and industrial transaction may be blest with the coming change in the incidence of taxation is going to have a very vital influence upon fho producing community. For tn"e last hundred years indirect taxation has been regarded as an exploitation o~f the masses of the people, a cunning device whereby the wealthy aristocrats shifted the cost.of government from their shoulders on to those of the already starving masses. Castles, halls and mandr-houses paid the irreducible minimum of taxation without making them taxation free. Mr. Lloyd George drew a parallel between a lordly aristocrat and a hard-working tailor in the town of Chester. The lord has his castle and grounds in the city for which he pays less in taxation than a small tailor who has his unimposing little shop near the lord's castle gate. The might of the dynasty of wrong has been : broken, however, and the unholy curse of indirect taxation is going to be shaken to its foundations. ' Well might Hudibras say, "How various and innumerable aro those who live upon the raFDle," when he saw that even those in the last gasp for life, dying of i starvation, were taxed upon the very rags that covered them and upon the crumbs put into their mouth which only prolonged their agony. ThG wrongs of our social structure cannot be understood until the true principles that should regulate taxation are accurately known. Taxation of the future • will be a precise science and it will bo levied in accordance with the taxpayers' income, not upon what they eat, drink, and wear, and it is as well that producers ( should understand something of what the future is fraught with. The Hon. Mr. Macdonald has given a glimpse of i what lies in the political future, but only a glimpse; what ate the indications? In European countries as well as in the United States there is an anarchic effort to destroy all responsible governments and put in their place an anarchist dictatorship. In New Zealand labour troubles are being engineered similar to troubles in Britain and other European countries; the anI archist realises that between the close J of war and the time of soldiers reaching their homes is the opportune time to launch an effort to destroy those homes and to raise destruction and chaos for the men to come back to. The anarchists have cried out against taking various courses til] the men who have fought have returned, but it does not suit, their purpose to wait till the soldiers are back, they realise that the soldiers will have no sympathy with men who prefer gaol to doing their duty as men. Much misery and privation may result to the Industrial classes by government incapacity and failure to realise the dangers that are threatening, but it seem? that no relief is offering, and the "heroic measures" may come too late.