ANTI-POVERTY SOCIETY. ANNUAL MEETING Auckland, Feb. 20.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 345, 23 February 1889, Page 6

ANTI-POVERTY SOCIETY. ANNUAL MEETING Auckland, Feb. 20.

The annual meeting of the above Society was held last night in the Foresters' Hall, Korangahape Road, when there was a fair attendance. The new President of the Society, the Rev. E. H. Gulliver, M.A., occupied the chair. He expressed regret t hat owing to the want of a piano t hey would be compelled to do away w ith the promised overture. He also c xpressed regret that their Secretary, Mr Hooper, who should have been present was unable to attend as he was laid up iv the Hospital in consequence of an attack of fever. Under the circumstances Mr Batty read the report as follows :—: — First Annual Repokt. — In presenting the tirst annual report to the members of the Anti- Poverty Society the Committee de sire to state briefly the work done during the past year, and to offer some suggestions for increasing the Society's influence in the future. During the year eight public meetings have been held, at Avhich addresses have been delivered on various subjects, all tending to establish the truth of our assertion that involuntary poverty is the result of bad laws, and that it is only by wise and just laws that it can be finally abolished. The most successful of our public meetings was held in the Foresters' Hall on the 20th November, when Sir George Grey presided, and the Rev. E. H. Gulliver, M.A., delivered an eloquent address on "Progress and Afterwards '* to an appreciative audience of about 400 persons. Your Committee are glad to report the establishment of a branch of this Society at Cambridge, and the delivery of an address there on "Land Nationalisation," by the Rev. Dr. Hooper, U.D. In the early part of the year about 5,000 tracts were obtained from Hem-y George and Co. , of New York. They are all in support of the principle of gradually concentrating taxation on land values only. These tracts have nearly all been distributed, and it is very desirable that afurther supply should be ordered at once, Your Committee had decided to publish Mr Gulliver's address on " Progress and Afterwards," and also a paper on " The Struggle for Existence," contributed by Mr Hould, as tracts for distribution, but un - fortunately the state of our funds will not permit this at present. Feeling thus the urgent need of tunds to carry on and extend the work of the Society, the Committee now appeal to each member to bear in mind that the entrance fee is merely nominal, and that unless each one does what he can to supply the sinews of war, our work must necessarily languisk It is very desirable that advertisements be inserted in the leading newspapers in the colony, inviting those who are in sympathy with ouraitnsto communicate with our Secre tary with a view to the formation of branch societies. The Committee strongly recommend members to become subscribers to the " Standard," a weekly paper published in !New York by Henry George, and devoted to the advocacy of the land tax. It is vigorously edited, and each number contains extracts from th 9 leading papers and magazines of the day, showing the progress of the movement. It is now supplied regularly by the Society to the reading-room of the Free Library. The numerous books now published on the land question and on social questions generally form quite a library by themselves, and should, as soon as practicable, be acquired by the Society for the use of themembers. Ladiesare earnestly invited to become members of our Society, and to lend it their powerful aid, — none are more vitually interested than they in putting an end to the blie"hting poverty which renders the present so sad, and the future so threatening. Finally, the AntiPoverby Society would call upon all those who leel that this modern life of ours is not at all what it should be ; that it might be far better, brighter, and nobler than it is, and that when once the remedy is fully understood hardly any effort will be needed to make it so, — we call upon them to study the land question in all its bearings ; to consider that the conditions of modern society render a reasonably healthy, happy, and virtuous life impossible to the masses ; that those conditions can be improved by wise and just legislation, and that each one can do something to help to bring about a better state of things ; but that so long as we are pathetic, and excuse ourselves from taking our share of the work, we must expect the existing conditions to continue. — J. Batty, President; W. S. Ramso>", Secretary. The President next introduced Dr. Hooper. He said he had had the pleasure of having met him in India years ago. The Lajs t d Tax. — Dr. Hooper was received with applause. He expressed pleasure at being present. He said that they had it on the best authority that poverty would never be totally eliminated from the world, but to quote Scripture in support of ninety -nine 100 th, of the poverty at present existing in the world was foolish, if not immoral. It was simply the result of man's selfishness towards his brother man. It was no mistake of the Creator. There was food enough for all and to spare. The advance of civilisation and progress served simply to increase the gulf between those who had too much and those who had too little. As far as he knew, the material civilisation had only in one way assisted poverty. That was in the introduction of steam, which had resulted in minimising the starvation from famine. That was specially noticeable in India. Ever since Malthus had introduced his diabolical theory there were people who supported his ideas ; bub it was an insult to the Creator, and was contradicted by lacts While some parts we>e crowded, other portions were equally depopulated. True, man had animal instincts, but he also had spiritual instinct, and it was a fact that the more man increased in civilisation and intellectual life the less his reproductive qualities were developed. They could not at present eradicate the selfish tendency of man. To check this grinding poverty they must remove the temptations for the exercise of selfishness. It was circumstances that made man so selfish. If laws were made to regulate matters so that all could have enough, there would then be no need for this scramble after wealth. Of course it was utterly impossible to equally distribute the wealth of the world; if they could, someone would soon monopolise the wealth of the others. They should take away the monopolies ; take away the laws which allowed monopoly, and give an equal chance to all. Capital was not the enemy to labour (applause) ; it was a mistake to think that. Capital itself could be starved out, for it was merely the sbored-up results of labour. The landlord was the true enemy of labour, because he was lord of that which was never meant to be the property of any individual. They might as well make the sun and air individual property. He was not speaking against landlords them? elves, but the system itself. It was utterly wrong in principle. The land was the which the Creator had given for the purpose of feeding mankind. The man who held the land was the*master of the others. Many thought' that the remedy for distress was peasant proprietorship, and no doubt it was an improvement upon large landed esto' es; but the principle j of individual owner&Li was in itself radi- j

cally wrong, and until that ■was done away with they should not see the end of poverty. There was no need for the State to take the land from the owners, all that was required was that all the taxation of the country should be put upon the land. That tax should be the favourite which could be most easily collected. He was pleased to hear the Premier the other night confess that land nationalisation must come. He was glad to hear that admission. All other taxes were hard to collect. Officials had to be multiplied to prevent deception and evasion of the taxes. That, of course, produced demoralisation. No man could, however, hide his land, so that there was no possibility of evadement. He considered the land tax was the most nural and right tax. All others were taxes upon the productions of others, but no man produced the land, therefore no man had a right to own it. Land only acqufredjvalue through the increase of population. Surely the community were entitled to some of the value they added to the land. It was said that if they put more burdensupon thelandlord, the country farmers would suller, but that was a fallacy. The only ones who would suffer weie those who held land and did nob use it — who held it for recreative purposes and did not make it produce anything. Let those be taxed, but for the rest lay the tax in proportion to the value of the land. It was the town land that was the most valuable, and the faimer would nob be taxed upon his improvements as at present. At present they were taxed on anything which they had constructed. | The small farmers would be the greatest gainers by the land tax ; even the large landowners would benefit by it, as they would share in the general piosperit}'. Dr. Hooper then thanked them ior affording him an apporounity to address them, ana resumed his seat amidstapplause. 1> augural Audreys. — The Chairman thanked Dr. Hooper for hib admirable speech, and then he thanked the Society tor placing him in the position ot Piesident. Although unsolicited, the honour was tully appreciated. Although the Society was small in number, it still had a Crown Minister on the roll. They might remember that the great movements of the weld had been carried out by a. few determined men who were resolved to cairy out the work they had taken in hand. The Jesuit Society was a sample of what could be done by unity. They had exercised an enormous influence in the world, whether a good or eul he would nob venture to sa\. Yet it wab started by a handful of determined men. The initiative idea of the Jesuits was religion. That set the machinery in motion and caused it to work smoothly and nicely. They had also the most iion discipline. That word was not liked much nowadays, and yet any body of men, no matter what was their object, must be disciplined before they could become successful. Their initiative idea was what they should consider. They should avoid the danger of narrowness. The land question was not broad enough to be called this initiative idea. No ; as he understood it, it was the amelioration, as far as they could help it, of the poverty and misery of the world, and how to help on social life so as to make people more happy and contented. They wanted some great principle to work upon. Let them realise that the whole iield of human life was theiis to do as much as possible to alleviate su tiering and generally improve thestatus of mankind. Anotherdanger was that of revolution. Of course at times they were necessary evils. They saw them in nature, as at Tarawera or Vesuvius. Every now and then there was a revolution, both in physical matters ana sometimes in society ; but whenever they occurred they were unpleasant. They caused miseiy and wretchedness. None could read the story of the French Revolution without feeling how terrible were the times. Nature pointed to evolution as the better plan. It was slow and gradual. The work was done by slow processes, and so they should do. Rushing aboub with fire-brands would do more harm than good. Forms of Industrial Life. —He had better now get to his lecture upon "Forms of Industrial Life.'' He feared that some might expect a speech upon factory life, bub such was not his intention. One saw on all sides the most wonderful devoloprnent of machinery. Production of goods >vas thereby enormously increased. By it production had also been simplified and made consequently more economical. The natural thought would have been that happiness would have been increased when more goods were made. But John Stuart Mill bad said it was extremely doubtful whether the introduction of machinery had assisted to alleviate in even the slightest degree the sufferings of even one individual upon earth. If that was true was it not enough bo make them think seriously upon the matter ? In the old monastic life they saw the results of what might be termed co-opera-tive or common social life. There they had a large band of men devoting their estates to the common wealth. Although there might have been much that was wrong in monastic life, still he, for one, must consider it one of the most retrograde steps England took when it robbed the monasteries of their property to convert them into places for needy courtiers to live in. Let them cross the Atlantic, and in Peru they found that before Spain devastated it there was a race called the Incas who were able to live in happiness without any poverty such as they at present had. There was no individual ownership of the land. It was let out year by year. They were happy, but of course theie was no such thing as progress, but he was not at all sure that they were any the worse for that. (Applause.) He almost felt inclined to &ay "Save us from progress." They had got progreess, and they had altogether forgotten the enjoyment of life. What they needed to realise was the great feeling of brotherhood, and not to live as units looking with su&p cion at each other. They all realised that life was a mere farce and misery unless they were able to use the power they now possessed, not for the mere purpose of increasing individual wealth, but to make human life happier than it would have been had these discoveries never been made. It was in order to draw attention to these questions that he had decided to say a few words to them upon some forms of industrial life. (Applause.) Poor Relief.— Mr Hould said that some steps should be taken to organise some system oi relict thab would enable them to assist themselves. He referred to the fact that during the last fifteen years in Eng land £150,000,000 had been spent in pauper relief. At present in England there were about one million paupers and ten million who had to be assisted to keep them out of the workhouse. He considered that this would never have been but for the private ownership of land. He advocated the same system that proved successful in Holland, where those who were unabie to face the struggle of life might find an asylum, and yet be compelled to support themselves. As a sample of poverty in the colonies, he mentioned the tact ot a poor woman in Dunedin making 150 bags and being paid 8d for her work. He strongly advocated a system by which all public institutions tor relief .should be made sell-supporting. He concluded by moving,

" That, seeing the heavy cost and the unsatisfactory nature of poor relief, the AntiPoverty Society of Auckland begs respectfully to request the Government to obtain, through their Agent - General in London, full particulars of the working of the establishment for tho relief of the poor maintained by the Government of the Netherlands, at Veenhuizen and at Ommerschaus, and also of the working of the voluntary co-operative agricultural colony at Fredericksoord, in the hope that the information thus obtained may furnish suggestions for changing our system of poor relief into a system of organised self-help." Mr Kelly seconded the motion. He said that the general direction of society was now socialistic. They should do away with the system of men looking to the Government for permanent employment and a pension afc the end. He believed that their gaols and other institutions could be made self-bupporting by intelligent management. What they wanted was more production and less speculation. The motion was then put and adopted, after which the meeting closed.