SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 431, 12 May 1937, Page 3

SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT

CONFISCATING PRIVATE TRANSPORT Disturbing Announcement The Minister of Transport has made ene of the most disturbing announcements yet announced by any Socialist Minister of State. He has stated that the whole of the long distance goods transport system which operates beyond 30 miles on any railway route is to be forcibly taken over and socialised. To this the National Party Executive in a Statement to the Press says: This ruthless confiscation cannot on any proper grounds be defended.” Large numbers of such businesses are being run by individuals and by private companies. Hundreds of families are subsisting on the profit of their enterprises. In many cases transport business has been fairly and properly conducted by generations of the same family. Hundreds of adults and children are relying on these individual businesses to provide mpn-ey to buy them food and clothing. The whole confiscation may be in keeping with the Socialists’ political promises. Let us assume 'that it (is. but no one ever dreampt that such ruthless destruction of business would eVer eventuate. ‘'They will, pay the owners compensation!” Will they compensate the men, old and young who will necessarily be thrown out of work? N they do and give them a lump sum of money what use will that be? How can any sum of money unless it is so large that on investment it will return an income equivalent no wages, be any real compensation? Men are about to be thrown out of work. Businesses are to oe con fiscated. New avetines of employment are to be sought by many wno save spent all their adult lives in transport work andi perhaps at a time when worn will be hard t< cl_ tain. Every day warn'ngs are u'.teied, from abroad -is well as in New Zealand, that the peak prices of w.-ul cannot be mainfaiijed and when cur National income falls Tien and women now living in a temporary phase of plenty will be fore td once more to endur e the agony of unemployment, and it will be depression created by oir own gross folly. The enormous addirna to the ranks of the which will result from tfm transport confiscation simply adds a fur her burden to the already heavily over.capitalised department. With the transport, a S ate mono poly, all competitive will of course go. Competition is as necessary to 1 good and< efficient businesses as oil is to machinery. The State transport, win inevitably become efficient, heavily overstaffed and ultimately .argely indifferent to the demands and needs of business. The public is about to experience the effect of Socialisation at a peculiarly sensative point. The railways are to b e loaded with Another 3 or 4 miljions Capital if private transport businesses are to be compensated at a fair price andl the railways are already capitalised to the colossal sum of £ 54,f03,000. Without competition the freight rates will almost certainly soar and our country cousins will find it much more expensive to shift their produce apart from he fact that they will have to contribute toward the cost of compensating those unfortunate persons about to he deprived of their livelihood. With the export and marketing of our primary produce in the hands of civil servants, with the transport system in the sam € condition the farmer will toon be able to regard himself as nothing else but a ser. vant of a sta"e which undertakes to pay him such a pric e for his butter, cheese and other produce as some high placed well paid civil servant deems adequate. Th e Socialists are apparently unable to realise ‘that the people of NewZealand- have not lost their characteristic love of individualistic their light to rifle and fall in open competition, their hatred for oppressive officialdom, and the time will not be loflg delayed when those character, istics will be asserted so that the men and women of New Zealand may remain free and not the mere took of an officious Socialism/"